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10 OSes We Left Behind

Posted by timothy on from the boot-them-up-at-festivus dept.

CWmike writes "As the tech community gears up to celebrate Unix's 40th birthday this summer, one thing is clear: People do love operating systems. They rely on them, get exasperated by them and live with their little foibles. So now that we're more than 30 years into the era of the personal computer, Computerworld writers and editors, like all technology aficionados, find ourselves with lots of memories and reactions to the OSes of yesteryear (pics galore). We have said goodbye to some of them with regret. (So long, AmigaOS!) Some of them we tossed carelessly aside. (Adios, Windows Me!) Some, we threw out with great force. (Don't let the door hit you on the way out, MS-DOS 4.0!) Today we honor a handful of the most memorable operating systems and interfaces that have graced our desktops over the years. Plus: We take a look back at 40 years since Unix was introduced."

5 of 562 comments (clear)

  1. Link to Single Page Version of Article by blahbooboo · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Operating+Systems&articleId=9129459&taxonomyId=89

  2. Criteria by aviators99 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I don't understand the criteria used to select these operating systems to remember. It's mostly consumer OSes, but then they throw in some hobby OSes (plus the bizarre X-Windows, which they admit is not an OS, and I claim is still alive).

    The ones I remember most fondly include:

    Pr1mos
    Multics
    Tops-20 (Twenex)
    Tops-10
    ITS
    VMS
    VM/CMS
    MVS
    RSTS
    RSX

    1. Re:Criteria by JasterBobaMereel · · Score: 5, Informative

      AmigaOS - Still going thank you (Last update September 2008)
      BeOS - Still Going thank you (as Haiku last update... last night)

      The X Window System - Not an operating system, not gone! Could they not find a 10th ...

      VMS - Still going thank you (Now called OpenVMS still in active development)

      --
      Puteulanus fenestra mortis
  3. Re:Bastards! by Threni · · Score: 5, Informative

    > Name one good Amiga Application.

    Deluxe Paint III.

    > None of the Amiga games/demos used the OS for anything

    Loads of shitty bloated American games did (lounge suit larry or whatever the fuck it was called, monkey island etc etc), but none of the fast, European arcade/console-style games did.

  4. Saying goodbye doesn't mean it's gone by amigabill · · Score: 5, Informative

    AmigaOS 4.1 was released in September 2008. Sure, there may be a miniscule number of people still using/buying it in your terms, but it's still here.