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55 Operating Systems On A PowerBook

Posted by timothy on from the but-officer-I-thought-the-limit-was dept.

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!!"

4 of 359 comments (clear)

  1. Um, WTF? by His+name+cannot+be+s · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Sure as shit, he's got 55 OSes on there.

    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. :p

    --
    "...In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true..."
  2. Re:Nice Testimonial by Sandor+at+the+Zoo · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Did you morons even read any of his site?

    I work at IBM Almaden Research Center. Before moving to the Bay Area, I was a Member of Technical Staff in the Information Sciences Research Center at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, where I worked on Operating Systems and Networking.

    I'll bet he has credentials that you guys who can't admit that Mac OS X rules (:-) can only dream of.

  3. not a bad idea by thatguywhoiam · · Score: 5, Interesting
    No, if this guy REALLY wanted to impress me, he would have the 55 OS's running nested inside each other, in an emulator.

    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.
  4. Re:Emulators by AstroSmith · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What's more fun is to see how many levels deep you can go with emulation. I did this several years ago and, if memory serves, had:

    OS 8.1 on a PowerComputing clone running VPC 3 (Windows 98) which was running UAE (Amiga Forever version -- 3.1 roms) running Fusion (68k Mac -- OS 7.1) running SoftWindows 1.0 (Windows 95) running PacifiST (Atari ST, TOS 1.0).

    I was actually able to load an image of "Dungeon Master" in this config, albiet taking a full six minutes to get past the splash screen.

    I remember trying other combinations involving different emulators, but Five levels deep is the best I was able to get. ...now if I only had used PC Ditto in PacifiST...