http://www.itworld.com/open-source/193823/how-linux-mastered-wall-street Though I believe FreeBSD has a faster IP stack. I think I have read NASDAQ was running Gentoo. And NYSE running Linux too on x86 hardware. Maybe some other Unix variants like Solaris as well if there is older hardware. All the servers in these exchanges are running Unix of some sort I would assume.
NYSE runs on Red Hat, NASDAQ on gentoo, LSE on Novell SUSE, Tokyo Stock Exchange runs Red Hat, deutsche stock exchange, Shanghai Stock Exchange, all run Linux.
good article: Linux powers world's fastest stock exchange: http://blogs.computerworld.com/14637/linux_powers_worlds_fastest_stock_exchange How advantages Linux over Windows for retail traders that I cannot say, besides that Linux is stable and virus free.
Yes... fonts and getting multiple monitors shouldn't take too long to get a grip on with all the documentation out there. However, Viruses and defragmenting hard drives in windows is an utter waste of time if you ask me. Unix systems need to be learned... it's not really a GUI thing your grandma can use. I don't mind windows for what I need it for, but soon I'm copping a macbook for that and other basic uses and using this PC as a server.
It's not so much about documentation but sometimes compatibility. I went through a nightmare scenario by running the latest ubuntu and AMD graphics processor that forced a huge ugly watermark on the bottom of my display screen (some unsupported hardware crap). After discussing with many perplexed ubuntu experts; the end-result was some compatibility issue with AMD Catalyst drivers. Since the problem was relatively new, I had to spend hours debugging and getting it back to normal. And I also had problems getting additional monitors to scale properly that were not simple fixes that you would find in documentation. And those were just a few of the problems I had at version 11 or 12. So I can attest to that comment.
That's true, some of the newer Nvidia and AMD cards are not yet supported fully, but they work with the developers so it's only a matter of time. Best option is to buy the supported hardware, or make sure you do have it before trying to install. The only thing nowadays really to worry about as far as drivers is video and wireless cards. As I said, I still think OS-X is the best desktop system to date. I would use Linux or BSD for all server/firewall/router/etc functions and ssh in.
I'm pretty sure OS X has real-time priority in the kernel. I am not an expert on OS X though, but yea you can build a custom kernel if you wanted.
They do have RT priority threads, https://developer.apple.com/library...al/KernelProgramming/scheduler/scheduler.html but that is not the same thing. It is probably a nitemare to do on a mac. On centos, installing a RTkernel is 5 lines of work using yum.