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55 Operating Systems On A PowerBook
OttoMagick writes "I found an article called 'Many Systems on One Machine' over at Kernelthread.com that shows over 55 operating systems running on a 17inch Powerbook. The article includes screenshots and descriptions of each system, and also hacks and tips on getting the nasty ones installed. The author Amit Singh (the Hanoimania guy, covered earlier on Slashdot) explains his reasons for all this in a related FAAQ (frequently asked + anticipated questions) ... In all a very interesting read, specially the FAAQ, where he calls the setup "the iPod of operating systems". Now thats an Apple Power User! I wonder what Steve Jobs would say if he sees people doing such things to his machines!!"
Now, run every single possible emulator available for each OS (from Sinclair Spectrum to CP/M to Atari 8-bit to N-64). That would multiply whatever "wow!" factor is involved here.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
From one with lots of experience with many operating systems:
I find Mac OS X to be the most productivity enhancing operating environment that I have used - ever. Mac OS X is my "primary" operating system, although I do not use, nor have ever used, any Apple systems for or at work.
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
Sure as shit, he's got 55 OSes on there.
:p
This is all kinda like a mule with a spinning wheel: No one knows how he got it, and be damned if he knows how to use it.
Seriously tho' Almost all of them are running under virtual PC. That hardly makes this article about a powerbook, and more a testemonial to Virutal PC ( or a simple x86 processor ).
Now, if you want to have fun, one could certainly load 55+ OSes native on a PC notebook, all directly bootable with one of those new-fangled boot managers.
"...In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true..."
See if you can name 55 OS's
When I was 12, I got 20 different distros running on my PC (along with a few Windows versions). Now this gives me and others a goal to beat.
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I've actually been trying to get BeOS Max to run under VPC 6, and its sorta working, but not really.
Basically, I'm able to boot to the floppy image or CD image and start the installation. mouse works. problem is, as soon as the BeOS environment gets any KB input, the input (mouse and KB) both hang complete. Installation will continue, but you can't click or otherwise get thru the installation fully.
So far I haven't been able to get it to install completely (just when its about to finish, my cat leaps on the KB and hangs it). I'm hoping however that when it IS fully installed it'll 'just work' and the KB issue will disappear.
I've tried this on a couple different machines with the same results, so I think it is definitely an issue w/ VPC in conjunction with BeOS Max and not the hardware. My next step is trying an ADB keyboard instead of USB.
Anyone else gotten this to work?
Umm, ever heard of "have your cake and eat it too" -- at the end of the day he doesn't have to reboot, and if the install is fubared, delete the drive image file and start over painlessly... plus having any number of them running at once is pretty neat, while working in Excel and burnin' in the background... try that on yr klone and see if you keep your hair.
Damn those pesky terrorists
"What, no SCO?"
Which one, Open Server, Unixware or XENIX...
I used them all and the all suck
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
Having had both BSD and Linux variants on mac right at OS X.0 release, I didn't find an easy way to boot load all without typing in openfirmware commands (in Forth).
:P )
I never learned Forth well enough to write my own boot loader, tho.
I had at least 5 (and I recall 7, but I have a feeling that included YellowDog Linux and Debian PPC) mac native OSes installed at once before the machine failed (power supply, I later learned - this was on a PowerMac 7500).
BeOS
MacOS9
MacOSX
FreeBSD
SuSE Linux
I also ran emulators for everything under the sun and probably had more OSes than he had that way - I tried a good chunk of the downloadable OSes I found off of emulation.net and had VirtualPC (1.0, mind you) with DOS and Windows 95 (tho the OS is technically DOS).
I slipped away from the emulator scene after the death of that machine, though. The only thing I've grabbed recently is an Apple ][ emulator for old times sake (running on Windows... that's probably heresy, but my working mac is old
I don't think DuckMan was saying that the x86 based OS's should be running natively. I think he was referring to something more like: "if you are going to have a list of Powerbook OS's then the list should contain only ones that run natively." I agree with him about the cheating. If emulation is OK for the list - then why didn't the author run as many MAC emulated OS's as possible as well as any additional Windows ones? There was an article recently on Slashdot about replacing a TI calculator OS with an open source one - so don't forget calculator OS's in the list either.
Well, while you can't directly run old versions of Mac OS on new Apple hardware, there is emulation that would allow you to do it.
It's available from emulation.net on the Macintosh emulator page.
That would be impressive. It's probably been mentioned already... but this is not a bad technique. i knew a guy who ran a University web server like this, few years ago... not quite 55 OS's, but it went like this:
Old PowerMac running BeOS with SheepShaver - > which emulated Mac OS, running Virtual PC - > which emulated Windows, which ran IIS.
"Ha! Let's see it crash through three Operating Systems!"
That was the idea anyways. It was damn slow but nice thing was that when the Windows image crashed it only took 6 seconds to recover to its saved 'state'.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
All those operating systems and no mention of the one I _still_ like to play with...
What about the Commodore 64? If you're going to count running OS' through VPC then you might as well go get the C=64 emulator. Heck, why not Apple ][?
Anyone notice this is the same guy who solved Towers of Hanoi in over 100+ ways? Check out is projects link in the FAAQ.
Quite impressive for someone who got hardcore into computing just out of spite.
Also of note from his resume: He's also doing Desktop Linux work for IBM. Interesting to know that IBM does Desktop Linux at all, even if it is confined to their research labs at this point.
For example, I think OpenBSD and a laptop may be a smart combination, but then I see:
and immediately lose interest. Try running it natively, since that's what a sane person who actually wants to use it, would do.As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Only one version of OS/2 was officially released for the PPC, but it lacked networking support and was quickly withdrawn after IBM stopped making PowerPC ThinkPads. When I used OS/2 for x86, there were rumors about the PPC version swirling about. The OS2PPC project was officially put on hold in 1997, and was never revived.
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I shudder to think how many things I could run at once on my dual G5... :)
I've just got Contiki running on my C64, ethernet enabled and all. Haven't really been able to set it up for anything fancy yet (as in, not enough room for a bunch of C64 drives or even a comfortable place to use it), but I'm sure I'll get something fancy running on it eventually.