For the *BSDs it's not very hard at all to get patches for anything. Software updates for example, is something FreeBSD Ports is really great at, it's not only for installing software, but for keeping yourself up to date. Which is why Debian mimics it with APT and Gentoo rips it off with Portage. Updating the system is usually only a few commands and a reboot, though if you know what you are doing you can even upgrade kernels without a system reboot.
And let's not forget the non-*BSD UNIXes, OpenSolaris has a HUGE community, I doubt you'd find anything involved with it to be all that proprietary these days, though with Oracle at the helm, that might change. There's also Darwin, but a lot of the software developed for it is proprietary and requires OSX-only components to work, but it's still pretty good in it's own right.
All that and anyone using any *nix really ought to be on freenode IRC, in their OS's respective channel asking for help if they can't figure out what's wrong. While you will come across a lot of elitists, most of the people in the various channels there are more than willing to help people out, at least in the *BSD channels, we delight in helping new users learn what it means to really use a computer.
I see this kind of thing all the time and have to wonder if we're seriously so lazy as a society that we can't even be bothered to say linux 
Except that I wasn't referring to just Linux, if you're talking about the UNIXes as well as any OS running The Linux Kernel, then *nix is the easiest way to lump together that which shouldn't really be lumped together. You can't really call "Linux" a UNIX not just because it's only a kernel, but because the OS that it is usually used with is "GNU's Not UNIX" (GNU). The closest it gets is "UNIX-Like" in functionality and usage, but they are entirely different animals. It's like calling a platypus a beaver, they might be pretty close in looks and some of what they do, but in the end one's part duck and the other one builds dams. This doesn't even touch on the starkly different design philosophies behind the development of each.
And to anyone who wants to correct me by saying that the *BSDs are only UNIX-Likes as well, I'll have you know that that's just because of SCO's double-standard when it comes to what is a "true UNIX" or not. Look at OSX, it's considered a true UNIX but it's the b*std three-way love child of Darwin, Mach, and FreeBSD.
If anything, I'm sick of the "you should switch to Linux" argument based around the fact that can do what the typical luser needs, that's like buying a $20k professional table saw with joiner and planer attachments just for ripping plywood, when a $1k table saw (Windows) already does the same thing because someone told you it's cuts are accurate to within 0.0000000000000001 degrees, not to mention the 30 extra adjustments you need to make to get such a cut. Windows is by far the easiest OS to use, and due to how many people not only use it, but how many things require it's use, the only one that the non-power user should use, anything else is overkill for their needs. As for security, the only thing that protects my Windows machines is a hardware firewall, I don't run AV or anti-spyware/malware software on my Windows machines, don't have a need. Security has little to do with the OS and more to do with how someone's using it and what they're running on it.
I must apologize for derailing this thread, my original intent was to keep the OP using what he already has and solving his problem instead of throwing random OSes at it until it went away. From past experience this sounds like a potential RAM-related, and if anything his issue should be resolved instead of this thread diving into the depths of argumentative OS fanboyism.
