So I decided to make a list of all the operating systems I’ve ever used. now by used I mean really used for meaningfull stuff not just logged in on once. I think I have written a program on everyone of these. Most of them for actual money. On everyone of them I have had administrative privs equivilent to root on Unix. On the ones marked with an * I had knonwledge of the internals of the operating system at a level that let me make modifications to it or use internal tables/data in ways that regular programers could not. For RSTS/E I was actually part of the OS development group and wrote extensive code that was shipped with the OS to customers.
• IBM 1130 DOS
• RSTS/E *
• OS8/COS-310
• RT-11/CTS-300 *
• RSX-11M (and other closely related)
• TRAX
• OS 16 (Perkin Elmer/Interdata)
• OS 32 (Perkin Elmer/Interdata) *
• Unix/Linux (several versions)
• TOPS-10
• TOPS-20
• VMS (Vax/VMS and Alpha VMS) *
• MS-DOS/Windows (lots of versions)
• Mac OS
Two of them I actually like less than Unix/Linux. A couple of others are less powerful than Unix/Linux but so easy to setup and use that I like them better anyway. I don’t actually think of myself as being all that experienced BTW. There are a number of operating systems I wish I’d gotten to try. I think it is really too bad that there are so few operating systems in general use today. I blame Linux for that. Given the high cost of entry for developing a new OS competing with free means very little chance to recoop costs. And Linux sucks up all the people willing to work for free.
BTW A few computers I’ve worked with hardly count as having a real OS. Such as the following:
PDP-8 with paper tape assembler
First generation TRS-80
IBM P6060
Apple II
Anyone here have a longer list?
My list is definitely not as long. DOS, Win3.1 through XP (except, proudly, WinME). Linux, ranging from RedHat pre-2000 to Gentoo to Ubuntu to SuSE; also ranging from headless servers to desktop environments. PalmOS. MacOS before OS X, though not proficiently.
There are plenty of non-mainstream OSs, though. I think it’s more that Linux is more of an ‘established’ OS. But there are a ton of varieties of BSD, all with active communities (OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD…). There’s the Hurd kernel. MIT’s got their own OS, Athena maybe? BeOS is pretty much dead, but I think an open-source version lives on. I forget what it is but another team basically set out to recreate Win98-ish.
I also think that operating systems are becoming less important. I have two hard drives, one with Windows and one with Linux. I predominantly run Linux these days. I’m in Windows because I wanted to play Team Fortress this weekend. But mostly, I live in a Firefox session. All my e-mail, from multiple accounts, ends up in GMail. Most of the documents I need are in GMail. I can edit the documents in OpenOffice or Word, or just edit them in GMail itself.
All my school notes live in a wiki, and so do several other important things. I could happily switch to MacOS tomorrow and the only real difference would be the UI. (Well, and new features.) I’m just as comfortable in Linux as in Windows. (Well, actually, I’m now at the point where I’m more comfortable in Linux, and find it easier to use. But some of that might be a proficiency thing.)
I just feel as if OSs are becoming more and more like, say, network drivers — important components, but really something the end user doesn’t really need to worry about.
For me, the best operating system is Linux because it rarely hangs.,,*
Glad you found something that works for you. My toaster rarely hangs either but I don’t use it for computing stuff. For me Windows does that stuff better than Linux. Windows also very rarely hangs for me.
there are many different operating systems but of course i would still prefer to use linux for stability ,-`