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I used to have an "interesting" job with the DoD. One day, monkeying around with a Windows NT server, we discovered an escrow crypto key buried in the guts of the operating system. The organization whos name was associated with the key wasn't "supposed" to be doing operations inside borders of CONUS, so we wondered if it was real or not. I worked for a DRU (direct reporting unit) to Air Staff and we reported this through channels. Lo and behold, the very next release didn't include the escrow key. The next service pack removed it from our system. We received no feedback from above, which isn't uncommon.

Even today, I've analized Windows systems which haven't had a single software package added to them and they're trying to contact various places out there on the net on various port numbers. Why? Good question. Not all of the communications were to Microsoft.

My view is this. I've been in the business of securing communications and data for a long time. Windows simply isn't a viable platform to perform these functions. Microsoft tells me I can "trust them", but they won't prove that they can be trusted. The guys you mention might not be the greatest folks on this planet, but thier operating systems have been scrutinized by far too many others for much to get past. The same can't be said about MS. In addition, MS has a deplorable business reputation. I work for state gov't now, but when I was a consultant, it was generally thought to simply be "bad luck" to enter partnership with MS at any level. I've got plenty of horror stories, but they're not worth repeating here. Most can be found on Google.

I wasn't going to mention this here, but my favorite is really FreeBSD, and then OpenBSD for firewalls.

Stallman is known to be a nutcase. :-) ...as is Theo Deradt, although he seems to be a malicious nutcase.

Oh..."Slow-laris"? Nah...not going back there! :-)

I work for DoD now doing the same type of work, but I’ve not seen any outgoing traffic from standard MS installs and one of the very first things we install on our systems are 3rd party software firewalls that track all outgoing packets. The DoD is now making windows systems their “standard” operating systems as a matter of fact, which has been going very well. But there are plenty of other choices out there, FreeBSD as you said (I won’t use “the Rat’s” OpenBSD version after his comments about our military which caused his DoD funding to get jerked). If you think Solaris is slow you should really check out the new “Indiana” version of OpenSolaris, fastest version of Unix for Intel I’ve ever used, even in a VM.