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Why New OSes Don't Catch On
mopslik writes "OSNews has an interesting editorial discussing why smaller operating systems will have a hard time gaining popularity. Familiarity, developer participation, and market saturation are listed as reasons for failure. Although the article focuses mainly on Syllable and SkyOS, I'm sure there are countless other operating systems to which these arguments apply."
The article misses the point that Operating Systems are just tools that allow us to use programs. And programs are about being able to get useful stuff done.
People still use the Atari ST (mainly the emulator version) to do music, because there are useful applications there.
For the most part, people really don't care what OS they are using, just as long as they can accomplish whatever tasks they need to do.
I cannot answer for anyone else but I read your post and decided to put in my $.02.
I personally bought BeOS 4 after trying out the bootable demo cd that was available at the time.
When I loaded the demo I went from BIOS to full useability in under 20 seconds, so I thought that was pretty cool.
My BeOS machine was an extra computer at I had laying around. After a few weeks of using the OS and finding I could do mostly everything I did on my windows box(email,websurf,rip mp3s,listen to said mp3s with the wonderful soundplay) I decided to move the HDD into my main computer and dual boot windows and Be. For about a year I used BeOS a majority of the time.
I will admit there was one reason I never gave up Windows totally for Be...games. I liked a lot of the freeware games for Be, mostly puzzle games but none of the mainstream dev houses would port for it. I finally had to give up on Be after OS5 came out and they took more out than they put in. I think I enjoyed it most for the potential it had, probably the same reason I still have and Amiga 500 in a corner that still gets used.