OSes

upyr1

Spaceman
Hi,
This is not supposed to be a my OS is better than yours thread, but I was wondering what opperating systems your running. I'm running windows and Suse 9.2.
 
Whatever suits me.
Standard is usually Dos (6.22 or 7.0), a DOS based Windows (98SE) and recently also a NT based Windows (XP). These are practically on all machine of mine.
Besides that I also regularily use Geos, AMSDOS, CPM, and Linux in several varieties.
 
GeOS.

No, honestly: Two machines with DOS 6.0 and 6.22, one Win3.11, two Win98SE, one WinME laptop (curses!), one Win2k laptop (not quite so many curses), and since yesterday an experimental Win2k3 server.
 
OSes I'm always running:
  • Windows 2000/XP
  • Mac OS X
  • Solaris Sparc
  • FreeBSD

OSes that occasionally suit my fancy:
  • Solaris x86
  • Linux x86
    • Sun Java Desktop System
    • Suse
    • Fedora
    • Mandrake
    • Red Hat
    • Knoppix
  • BeOS

OSes that occasionally get loaded into QEmu:
  • Plan 9
  • AtheOS
  • ReactOS

OSes that I *wish* I could run:
  • LCARS ;)

Any other questions?
 
On the gaming computer I run Windows 2000 Professional SP4
On this laptop I run Slackware Linux 10.1
The primary fileserver/VNC server runs Slackware Linux 10.1

I also have a Windows 2000 Professional SP4 box that sits there and does nothing but run a 24/7 Freelancer server.
 
I've got XP Professional and Gentoo Linux dual-booting on my laptop, Debian on my Pentium II "server" and IRIX 6.5 on my SGI Indigo 2 (I win!) workstation.
 
ChrisReid said:
Don't worry, most of the OSes in this thread don't really exist.

Excuse me? Which ones don't exist? GEM, GeOS, CP/M, Plan9, BeOS, AtheOS, *mutter* *mutter* ... They all look real to me. (Maybe I'm missing the joke again?)

Just for that, I'm linking to EROS. :p

IRIX 6.5 on my SGI Indigo 2 (I win!)

Now wait a moment. How is your Indigo "better" than my Ultra 10? Indigo 2's only had 200MHZ IP22 R4400 Processor (IIRC) while my UltraSparc II runs at 333MHz. So therefore, I win. ;)
 
Win98! That doesn't work! and a WinXP as well...ye-gads...it's STILL sticking it's tounge out at me! After 6 years!

Look!

(-8 + 9-: = 98

X-) + :-P = XP

I swear, Bill Gates must have some sort of tounge fetish...
 
AKAImBatman said:
Excuse me? Which ones don't exist? GEM, GeOS, CP/M, Plan9, BeOS, AtheOS, *mutter* *mutter* ... They all look real to me. (Maybe I'm missing the joke again?)

Just for that, I'm linking to EROS.

Yeah, all those are fake. Except GEM.
 
ChrisReid said:
Yeah, all those are fake. Except GEM.

Wow, I must have a really active imagination. How about you all come share my delusions with me as we explore:
The Wonderful World of Operating Systems!

MWHAHAHAHAHA (Thunder Claps) :D

First on our tour today, we have GeOS. I first ran across this on an HP handheld computer. Interestingly, this HP used Grafiti style handwriting recognition before the Palm even existed!
geos.gif


Next on our list is CP/M , a trimmed down version of VAX VMS designed for Microcomputers (what we call PCs today). This was fairly well received by the market, and was later cloned by a man by the name of Tim Paterson. His quick and dirty clone was purchased by a startup called "Microsoft" and sold as both PC-DOS and MS-DOS.
solace_cpm.gif


Now we come to the oddity of the Unix family, the Plan 9 operating system. Named after the movie "Plan 9 from Outer Space", this OS was an attempt by the inventor of Unix to improve upon his own work. With such features as "everything is a file", a new Windowing system, and a cute bunny replacement for the Unix "root" login called "glenda" (No, I am not making this stuff up) Plan 9 is considered one of the most advanced Unix-like OSes to ever exist.
screenshot.gif


Futher on our tour, we find the now extinct (but not dead yet) BeOS. BeOS was a founded by former employees of Apple during a time when Apple was having difficulties trying to develop a new OS. As a result, BeOS focused on modern memory management, a file system with full meta-data support, and powerful multimedia features. Everyone who used it loved it, but the OS was generally immature and had few programs. Meanwhile, Steve Jobs was working on NextStep as the most user-friendly Unix ever. Apple did finally decide to purchase an external OS, but balked at the $500 million price tag Be Inc demanded. Apple decided to purchase Next instead, and now we all know it as Mac OS X. The former CEO of Apple quipped, "We choose plan A instead of Plan Be."

BeOS is survived by decendants such as Yellow Tab and Zeta OS.

BeOS:
Beos.png


NextStep. The icons along the side are the "Dock" which can be seen (in a much improved version) on modern Macs:
768px-NeXTSTEP_desktop.jpg


AtheOS (from the name Athena) was one man's experiment to produce a decruftified Operating System. He succeeded quite well, but eventually stopped maintaining it. The project has since been taken over by others and renamed "Syllable".
Atheos_screenshot.png


Last on our list is ReactOS . ReactOS is an attempt by the Open Source community to produce a clone of the Windows NT operating system. Coming to life shortly after the now infamous (and quite dead) Freedows project, ReactOS actually began producing code up front and is now capable of running a large number of Windows NT programs. Unfortunately, the OS is not yet stable enough for general use.
abiword_on_reactos1.jpg


If you're still curious, check Wikipedia's list of Operating Systems both past and present. There's all kinds of OSes out there, from Apple's A/UX Unix Operating System to the Symbolics LISP machines. Let me know if you'd like a quick tour of any of them. :)

Most OSes for the x86 architecture can be emulated with the following programs:

VMWare ($$$)
Bochs (Free! I've developed a few small OSes on this.)
QEmu (A very fast x86 emulator that tends to work well with most Hobby OSes.)

Ask me sometime and I'll entertain you with other stories of Unisys Mainframes running MCP (Master Control Program), Sun's short-lived JavaOS, Microsoft's version of Unix, and a cool OS on a floppy from QNX. :)
 
ChrisReid said:
Eh, I see a whole bunch of DOS and Windows right there.
Sure, there's plenty of Disk Operating Systems and Graphical Windowing Systems there. None written by Microsoft though. :D

(For your sake, I honestly hope you're not serious about these being "fake".)
 
Hrm. This is hard.

I have NT 4 SP6 on one of my machines, plus Win2k, OS X (Tiger), plus MacOS 7.1 and 7.5 on two other macs. Win95 on a laptop I hardly use these days. My SSH gateway runs a custom version of PPC-Linux, an IRC and backup webserver running on another custom version of ARM-Linux.

Other OSes available include Irix 6.5 on an SGI Indy box (R4400 166MHz), another custom ARM linux running board. Cisco IOS 11 on a 2501 router, and IOS 12 on my network switch (Catalyst 2924M). And a custom ARM hardware running Windows CE 4.2.

Way too many variants. At least at work I have Windows XP and a RedHat 8 box, and a scattering of WinCE and Linux ARM devices.
 
The reference to 'NEXT' seems to be wrong however. I used NEXT 10 years ago, while I seem to recall that BeOS is quite some younger. Post Win95.
 
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