OS I'd Most Like To See Make a Comeback
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VMS (Score:5, Funny)
Orthogonality FTW
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TOPS-10 ++ (Score:3)
Ours goes up to 36 !
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I think I have some windows 2000 disks around here somewhere...
Seriously, VMS had good and bad ideas behind it. The versioning file system was a great idea. So lets build proper version control into file systems. VMS didn't really go that far. I recall batch jobs failing after 2^15 invocations because their output file had exceeded the maximum number of versions.
The logical name system was far ahead of anything in unix. Being able to change even process private logical names on the fly was convenient at tim
Re:VMS (Score:5, Informative)
Eh. VMS is the first multiuser OS I ever used, but the only thing I really miss is the ability to change the prompt to a crocodile.
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The Nipple (.)(.) with flashing red periods was my triumph prompt.
The best though was the classmates who wrote a script that mirrored the logon sequence and made it look like you fat fingered the password then exited suppressing the logout messages. They got a teacher's account and read his e-mails that showed that he was a little too friendly with a recent student. Good times.
Re:VMS (Score:4, Informative)
I used to use VMS extensively and recently felt like a blast from the past so picked up an OpenVMS Hobbyist CD for Alpha for 30 bucks, see http://www.montagar.com/hobbyist/mount.html [montagar.com].
You can pickup a free Alpha AXP emulator called FreeAXP from http://www.migrationspecialties.com/FreeAXP.html [migrationspecialties.com] and once you've signed up at your local DECUS chapter (also free) to get license PAKs you're in business. Runs pretty well on a decent PC, seems close to the same speed as the last real AlphaServer I used which IIRC was about $150K.
Re:VMS (Score:5, Funny)
VMS: designed by software engineers for scientists.
Unix: designed by students for nobody in mind.
VMS - the indestructable OS (Score:5, Interesting)
I was sysadmin for a VAX cluster back in grad school- one day we came in and got a report that the machine was giving error messages when people tried to access files.
It turned out the heads had smashed into the main system disk- total destruction. The OS barely noticed, other than it was unhappy it couldn't write log files or find some people's data for jobs.
We had another time when a student accidentally ran the equivalent of a fork bomb on the system. It slowed down a bit after 12 hours or so. It just prioritized and dumped the rest into the queue- we never did find out how deep the queue was before we purged it.
Yeah, it was clunky, ugly and tied really closely to the hardware. But damn was it reliable.
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Aye, I'd vote VMS, too.
My slashdot handle is the correctly-spelled version of my VAX/VMS Process Name, from back when it was cool for us undergrads to include a line in our login.com scripts, SET PROC /NAME=[handle], a new feature in version 2.0 that allowed us to change our process names to something less impersonal than our last name and last 4 digits of our student ID.
Most people used their names or nicknames, and some people used recognizable aliases like "el_gato" or "deadbeef" but I thought it would b
Re:Missing option (Score:4, Interesting)
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I learned assembly language on the original ZX81. 1KB of memory was a lot back in those days.
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For those of you who never did so, programming on VMS went like this:
1) To make a syscall, you prepared a block of memory (a struct) that had the parameters for the syscall; but the parameters were in bitfields, and depending on which bits were
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Dude, you're really shredding my nostalgia filter, and totally harshing my recollective reverie.
Options, blah blah blah (Score:5, Funny)
Where is the "Linux" option??
*ducks*
Re:Options, blah blah blah (Score:5, Funny)
DOS is on there.
*runs away, giggling*
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Why? DOS 3.11 runs just fine in a VM, without the incompatibilities of dosbox.
Anyhow, the OS I'd like to see return is IRIX.
Quite a few features in Linux owe their existence to IRIX, and there are still quite a few that haven't been ported.
Next to that, Unicos, obviously.
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Re:Options, blah blah blah (Score:4, Informative)
Why? DOS 3.11 runs just fine in a VM, without the incompatibilities of dosbox.
Most VMs only emulate AC97 sound hardware, or occasionally a SoundBlaster 16. If it's the former, you get no sound. If it's the latter, you get crappy sound. DOSBox emulates a variety of sound cards, so you can pick the best one for the game. DOSBox also emulates EGA and CGA graphics well. Most VMs don't bother emulating anything older than VGA, so some older games will simply fail. DOSBox also emulates serial over a network, so you can play head-to-head games that used to require a serial connection without finding a null-modem cable.
Add to that, DOSBox isn't x86-only. We tried playing Worms in DOS installed in a VM a while ago on a friend's Windows machine. No sound. Ran it in DOSBox on my PowerPC Mac, and it worked fine.
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You mean *BSD
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I'm confused. What glory days of mainstream Linux success would you like to see come back?
Classic Mac OS (Score:3)
Re:Classic Mac OS (Score:4, Insightful)
That's kinda funny, I wouldn't have touched a Mac with a 10' pole if it wasn't for OS X. Then again I used to really like NeXTSTEP and I'm a UNIX guy, so I'm actually loving OS X. Linux is my choice for desktops (and servers and media center PCs), but my last few laptops were all Macs. My next one will be a Mac, too.
Re:Classic Mac OS (Score:5, Insightful)
He said Classic Mac OS was a steaming pile under the hood (but not, implicitly, "over the hood"), while OSX was the opposite (great on the inside, but a steaming pile on the outside). I feel less strongly, but similarly.
With Classic Mac OS, it felt like working through the GUI was working directly with what the OS was doing; not like the GUI was a user-friendly "shell" around the "real" OS, hiding overly complex things from the user for their own good. In Classic Mac OS, working with the GUI was as direct a way to work with the computer as working with the CLI is on unices.
Now, in OSX, the GUI seems like a pretty, simple shell hacked on top of the "real" OS, the true interface of which is a complicated, difficult-to-learn CLI. Every app might have a different GUI, even many of Apple's apps have different appearances, and the "same" button has different behaviors in different apps (I'm looking at you, Zoom button). Consistency has gone out the window.
Compounding that, many apps now try to do file management within themselves, rather than leaving the file manager (the Finder) for that, adding to the "what app is my file in" confusion that so many uneducated users seem to have (apps are tools that you apply to files, not locations where you store them!). Yes, iTunes and iPhoto and the like have some very nice ways of browsing and organizing files -- but that functionality should be in the Finder instead (like how Cover Flow finally made its way from iTunes to the Finder, where it should have been to begin with). Even worse is when the organization that the app is doing is not directly reflected in the file system, leaving you dependent on that particular application to manage your files: merging two iPhoto libraries is not so simple as copying the contents of one into another, for example.
These are the kinds of things that Apple used to be exemplary about, and now they're little better than Windows. Still a little better, granted, enough that I still prefer the Mac over Windows easily, but I do feel like something has been lost since the days of Classic Mac OS. Much has been gained as well of course, but what was lost was not necessary to sacrifice for those gains. You could have both.
Re:Classic Mac OS (Score:5, Interesting)
Really, the thing about file management should be taken as a knock on modern file systems generally. The file system concept is increasingly an anachronism; for a decade or more it's simply lacked the capabilities demanded by modern applications. It's not surprising that when developers (on whatever platform) want to do things that don't fit neatly into the filesystem model, they tend to ignore the FS structure and go at it alone.
There have been attempts over and over to fix the FS, but that's been a spectacular failure despite massive investments (WinFS, the ambitions of ReiserFS4, etc). I think it's become clear that each application is going to want to structure data according to its own needs; while the FS served us well for years, a growing amount of user data doesn't fit neatly into "file" and "directory", and even when it does, users want files without names (photos), files which appear in more than one "directory" (music), etc.
With each app's data structure turning into a sort of "unique snowflake", if you will, the idea of a single interface that could manage data across all your applications (the Finder, Explorer, etc) is simply unrealistic. Users have become accustomed to thinking of their data as existing within their applications because no other concept is really workable. The big question is how data will be moved around within these "silos", but that isn't a new problem anyway.
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The problem that is preventing new designs being viable is that there are simply too many different types of data storage required for a filesystem to offer them all and be as good as the existing methods.
eMail storage is a good example. In theory it should be the sort of thing that a filesystem is ideal for. Lots of individual messages with random access, lots of creation and deletion. Problem is that many filesystems don't work well with large numbers of small files. They either get slow with 10k+ files o
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In the case of photos, the decreased ability to adequately organize my data is one of my biggest complaints about iPhoto. They replaced the hierarchical organization of the filesystem with a big disorganized pile.
This lead to some users dumping their data out of iPhoto (and the computer) entirely.
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The point is, after being Mac-less these last 10 years, OSX, when I finally started using it, was a crushing disappointment.
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Every web server available for System 7, 7.5.x, 7.6, 8, 8.5 or OS 9 memory leaked, we tried them all at my old work, starting with an AppleShare IP server on 7.1 through 7.6, it was such a pain the server remained at my desk so I could do periodic reboots through the day and watch the memory graph.
Then we got a copy of Mac OS Server 10.2, you know the slightly re-GUI'ed NeXTSTEP, that thing ran like a clock, averaged 6 months between restarts.
I went on to have an OS X Server 10.4 box go 422 days before a ba
Newton OS (Score:3, Interesting)
...or parts of it, at least, like the shared data/soup model. In fact, it's surprising no one has built a good NewtOS emulator for the iPad.
Re:Newton OS (Score:4, Insightful)
Obligatory missing options (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Obligatory missing options (Score:4, Interesting)
Shoot, I'm still looking for a half-decent migration path from PalmOS.
GLaDOS might hopefully be on track for a comeback next year if we don't see any more delays...
Re:Obligatory missing options (Score:5, Informative)
NeXSTEP is still alive, it was renamed to OS X.
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Sort of...
QDOS [wikipedia.org] (Quick and Dirty Operating System) was really just a cheap half-clone of CP/M. If you knew one, you could use the other without much trouble.
The Microsoft purchased QDOS and took the "Quick" out making it the "Dirty Operating System." Truth in advertising FTW.
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I've been around for a while and have used many of those OSes, but I, too, was looking for the "none" option.
I'm quite content with what we have right now. Those all went away for a reason.
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Those all went away for a reason.
The Conspiracy [catb.org], of course. Quoting ESR:
Eric Raymond is one smart dude. I'm surprise they haven't gotten to him yet.
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He's well known to be well armed. ;-)
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That's the option I was looking for: "None. Good Riddance!" And I'd like to see the current crop of OSes die.
While we're at it, the PC architecture ought to be taken out back and shot like a sick, old horse. I mean, how stupid is it that a bug in a driver for an add-on card can still hang the whole machine? And that without an OS, it can't do anything at all except twiddle a few BIOS settings and cry that it can't find an OS. No "monitor" (shell) like the Apple had. No built in programming language
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I'm quite content with what we have right now. Those all went away for a reason.
I never got BeOS to boot because by that point they were relying on the good graces of Microsoft, which most of us know doesn't work.
However, many of the people who used it back in the day seem to be permanently scarred. BeOS apparently ignored the performance first and the user second - got a process that needs resources? Tough luck for the process, the user needs them. Put differently, it almost never became laggy.
Sure, this means the performance was lower. But we have more performance every year, it's no
Re:Even more important: "None" (Score:5, Insightful)
*looks around* Hmm... I wonder if I've wandered to someone's lawn...
I feel sorry for youngsters. Computing in what my son calls "the olden days" was huge fun. Though not as productive as it is today.
Re:Even more important: "None" (Score:5, Insightful)
For certain values of "productive". Back in the old days you could write a graphing program with a couple of for loops and a plot command. Now there's all sorts of hoops you have to jump through to simply open up a window.
CPM? (Score:2)
You never forget your first...
OS/2 (Score:4, Insightful)
Muhahaha!
OS/2 (Score:2)
Re:OS/2 (Score:5, Insightful)
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I missed out on OS/2.
I remember trying to install OS/2 2.1, but it wasn't compatible with FRIGGIN ANYTHING. My standard joke at the time was that it wasn't compatible with the curtains, but seriously, the error code it gave said it wasn't compatible with the keyboard controller. THE KEYBOARD CONTROLLER.
When Warp came out I wanted to try that, but at the time I had an EGA graphics card with a monochrome monitor (yes, EGA had a seldom-used Monochrome mode), which is the ONE mode that Warp wasn't compatible wi
obvious (Score:2)
Multics (Score:2, Insightful)
http://www.multicians.org/
Mac OS 7 (Score:2)
Mainly for the interface. Back then, Apple was serious about providing the best possible user interface, doing extensive research in the area. Since then, the HI research group has been shut down. Apple isn't following its own guidelines, with apps providing multiple nonstandard interfaces (occasionally crappy ones, too). New features in OS X are chosen because they look spectacular rather than work optimally (the Dock, for instance). Broken stuff (OS X Finder) remains broken for years. Apple's gone downhil
Plan 9 (Score:2)
hp/ux (Score:5, Funny)
I work as a cod fisherman on a boat and I just polled all of the boat guys and we all agree that hp/ux is basically the best os ever. back in the 1980s I worked as an I.T. guy for a company that sold 6-ft inflatable bulls and we had a mainframe that ran hp/ux. but we used IBM machines running dr-dos on our desks, so we had to tell net into the hp/ux machine. i don't remember the name of the tell net program but it cost $40 and the company paid for it by not buying coffee mugs to give away at the annual christmas/yom kippur party.
anyway there was a pot smoker down the hall who didn't like hp/ux and liked to call it ph/ux instead (to make it a cuss). nobody liked him though because he was always late and wore teenage mutant ninja turtle shirts. also, hp/ux had a tool and I forget what it was called but it let you monitor the system, which was good. because you need to monitor the system very often. also you could run "ps" to view processes.
so this is why I think most people would agree that hp/ux is the best
Re:hp/ux (Score:5, Funny)
So what you're basically telling us is:
"Look at your server, now look at mine; look back to yours, then back to mine. Sadly, your server isn't mine, but your server could be like mine if you were running hp/ux. I'm on a boat."
didn't know what to vote for so... (Score:2)
If I were to ask for a re-release of an OS, it would be something that is not so bloatware.
Now that I voted, I'll read some of the comments for education (and compelling reason for not voting for Univac?)
HAL 9000 (Score:3)
Oh, wait, it would be as old and outdated as Windows NT/2000 or the last version of Mac OS 9 by now. Oh how the future of our past has failed... to fail us.
Commodore 64 (Score:3)
I want to be able to buy a Commodore 64. I just have to get a TV to hook it up to.
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You're able to buy them, on ebay or a variety of other sites. And the real gangsters get an actual Commodore 64 monitor.
PRIMOS! (Score:2)
Really, the only OS mentioned above that I would not like to see make a comeback is WinME.
MS-DOS 3.3 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:MS-DOS 3.3 (Score:4, Insightful)
Reliable, simple, did everything I needed it to do.
Unfortunately, MS-DOS 3.3 was OEM only.
6.22 was the latest and greatest retail version.
HP 3000 and MPE (Score:2)
MPE. I spent a fair amount of time working with HP1000s and HP3000s back in the early 80s. I found the hardware extremely dependable (once had to run critical reports for month end even though the AC was out and the room temp was over 100. The system never quit).
MPE was such a straight forward yet robust OS compared to others of the time. Digital, Data General, Wang were carving out pieces of the mainframe world back in the late 70 and 80s. I feel they laid the foundation for seeing that computers could
Burroughs large systems, Lisp Machine (Score:5, Interesting)
To me the most interesting thing that got lost in the dustbin of history are computer architectures designed to support high level languages.
We have this huge push for managed environments like .NET and Java as they are theoretically more secure because language constraints are enforced by the runtime environment, but this extra software runtime slows things down and adds memory overhead.
Consider if things like private variables were enforced in hardware. This could be done in parallel to the task of computing the result, and thus wouldn't need to be any slower, it would just take more room on the die. So we could have our improved security on native code.
This existed 40 years ago in the B5000. They continued for quite some time (bought by Unisys) but eventually lost out to mainstream processors. I don't know if the design was inherently slower, or if they just couldn't match Intel's fab capabilities.
And that is just the start of the cool things you could do with higher-level hardware architectures. I would love to have seen what would have happened if the microcontroller didn't swallow up the entire market.
As seen on Slashdot... (Score:2)
Missing option... (Score:2)
Microsoft BOB
RISC OS (Score:4, Interesting)
Not quite a comeback... (Score:5, Insightful)
I really loved BeOS back in the 90s. It was a solid, stable and insanely fast OS. Sadly I guess those things don't matter much when you've got nothing to run on it.
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When I was hunting around for a new OS to try as I was getting sick of DOS and Win and idiotic memory management for games etc., a magazine cover floppy?? had a Windows EXE of BeOS 5 Personal Edition. Now, considering it was actually running somehow on top of Windows, BeOS5PE was insanely fast, it ran multiple video clips AT THE SAME TIME with no frame drop, something that Windows could not do - it struggled with one video clip. The biggest problem is there was not enough applications, and it's image was it
They left out the one I wanted (Score:4, Interesting)
Where's Multics?
Re:They left out the one I wanted (Score:4, Funny)
Me: "?"
M.I.T. dude: "Honeywell".
Mac OS (Score:2)
Mac OS?
(OS X is NOT Mac OS)
Who knew there were som many... (Score:2)
Somewhere in an alternate universe... (Score:5, Funny)
Somewhere in an alternate universe, the desktop market dominating VisiCorp has just unleashed the latest version of their world class operating system: Visi On 2011.
Over at their competition, Apple CEO Steve Wozniak - to much fanfare as always - has unveiled the newest update to their ProDOS X operating system for their Apple 7e series personal mobile computing devices.
Both of these feature the latest web browser, PATHWORKS Mosaic, from the internet search engine leader Digital Equipment Corporation.
Being a weird twisted universe, of course they also have Linux - but it is written in Pascal.
Kids these days (Score:5, Funny)
CP/M. You kids and your multitasking and Gooeys and Colonels... MEH
Why, in my day, computers communicated with decks of punch-cards that were send by courier wrapped in brown paper. That's why they're called "packets". We piled them on top of the reader until we had time to get to them, and that was a company policy. That's why it's called "protocol stacks". And while we were waiting for communications to be established, we used the couriers to run homemade methamphetamines to each other. That's why it's called "Ethernet".
Uphill. Both ways. In the snow. Beating off bears with our paper-tape reels. And the bears were GRATEFUL.
DOS (Score:5, Interesting)
DOS was so good that Microsoft had to take extra steps to kill it to allow Windows to be successful. The main hindrance of DOS was the 640K limitation, which was solved by DOS extenders. Microsoft killed DOS by killing DOS extenders. When Microsoft C/C++ 7.0 came out, Microsoft compiled its compiler with a DOS extender, but didn't allow users to compile their own software with a DOS extender! Along with my supervisor, I went to a Microsoft show hosted by a "Microsoft evangelist" (that's what they were called then), and my supervisor, irate with the lack of a Microsoft DOS extender, asked the evangelist when DOS extender technology was coming. The evangelist conferred quickly with his colleagues and then immediately shot back, "The DOS extender technology, yes that's a part of C/C++ 7.0" just to get rid of the question.
Intel put out a great DOS extender and compiler called the Intel 386/486 Code Builder, but soon thereafter discontinued it -- many suspect due to Microsoft pressure.
The only DOS extender left was Watcom, which is why so many videogames were compiled under Watcom.
DOS was -- and continues to be -- great for embedded applications. It gives direct access to aall ports and interrupts. DOS continues to live iin the embedded world and with things like FreeDOS.
DOS is dead. Long live DOS.
Missing option (Score:5, Funny)
Emacs
Missing option: Minix! (Score:5, Funny)
Signed,
Linus T.
University of Helsinki, Finland
TRS-80 DOS?? (Score:3)
I've used TRS-DOS, DOSPLUS, and others.
What the hell is TRS-80 DOS?
Damn kids.
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What was the OS for the TLS-9E and its "user hostile" software?
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Kitchen_Table_International [wikimedia.org]
http://www.trs-80.com/ [trs-80.com]
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Windows ME hands down (Score:5, Funny)
It has to be Windows ME hands down.
I miss all the overtime pay.
Atari TOS (Score:3)
GNU/HURD (Score:4, Funny)
When it was released, GNU/HURD was far and away the fastest and most stable OS on DEC Alpha EV8 and PowerPC 620 based machines, and was the only thing that could run dBASE VIII, PageMaker 8.0, or Duke Nukem Forever at acceptable speeds.
CowboyNealOS (Score:3)
Re:Old Code (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Haiku looked interesting but at this point there are major problems.
1) The boot manager does not support more than one hard drive
2) There is no package manager
This after development began in 2001. When I first knew about it, it looked promising but now it just looks almost dead which is a shame.
Re:Old Code (Score:5, Funny)
It's a shame Apple bought NeXT-Step and with it Steve Jobs
I agree, Steve Jobs has been a nightmare for Apple. They just can't seem to make any products that people want to buy. "iMac", "iPod", "iPhone", "iPad"...it's a pathetic, endless series of failed products. It sucks too that he's turned Apple into the most valuable technology company in the world. An unmitigated disaster. BeOS could have made all the difference.
Re:Old Code (Score:5, Insightful)
There were certain aspects of BeOS that were amazing, but there were also certain aspects of BeOS that were crude and downright primitive.
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Steve Jobs is sort of an asshole. That being said, damn Apple makes sexy machines.
Sort of? Jobs is a complete and total asshole.
LK
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The hardware wasn't there.
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