Others worth mentioning: - FreeBSD (quite surprised it wasn't mentioned, as it's very well known in the industry) - MenuetOS (programmed in assembly language, super efficient, although not enough software) - Redox (young OS, programmed in Rust, remarkable for the progress in its latest release, already capable of playing Doom and Duke 3D, along with DOSBox for plenty of DOS games)
Fresh bonus item on the list: Serenity OS. The founder started a youtube channel, streaming the operating system's development, even working live on bugs, adding features, and even porting some games to the OS. Now they're also working on their own browser, which is something seen like an impossible task with so many standards nowadays. Serenity OS is truly a geek-only item for now, because you have to compile the whole thing yourself, and run it in a virtual machine. But this is definitely worth a top spot on your bookmark list, because they're moving fast and even have employees. And what's great about their youtube activity is that they have monthly progress videos, where stuff is summarized nicely. Binging the monthly reports was awesome - it takes some time, but you can pretty much see how the OS shaped up into something better and better...
I remember running OS/2 Warp back in the day. It really was a "Better Windows than Windows, Better DOS than DOS". It was absolutely hard to kill, and much more stable then either of them.
I remember rushing to buy OS/2 Warp when it was released - unfortunately, it ran like a sloth that took benzodiazepines on my machine (around half the speed of the current Windows at the time). It lasted 2 days before I uninstalled it.
It was easy to make OS/2 faster: 1. more RAM. 2. loose the Workplace Shell. It was an OO-based shell, the likes I have never seen again, but it was HEAVY. MiniShell gave far better performance, while being able to run all Windows 3 and OS/2 applications. With TShell, ypu could run it with 2 MB RAM, as a server in text-mode. I demoed Minishell on a 386sx and 10 MB RAM and performance was zippy!
This video is a goldmine for geeks loving to explore some very obscure OS's! Thanks for the suggestions, will definitely try some of them! I've only tried ReactOS and Minix so far, the rest is almost completely unknown to me...
10:43 Many don't realise, that they have MINIX embedded inside of their Intel processor, up and running even when the computer is "powered off". BSD family systems, like FreeBSD are missing, despite having much larger user groups than many mentioned here.
That's right. When the computer is connected to a power socket, some components are already powered up, even when the computer is not fully "started-up". This allows to "wake up on LAN" or, in this case, perform some computer maintenance tasks remotely even when the user turned the computer down. www.zdnet.com/article/minix-intels-hidden-in-chip-operating-system/
@@krzychaczu Ah - yes, - tend to not think about that but makes much sense -- However I run my systems off switchable power strip & after 'shutdown' finishes I usually flip the switch on the power bar = really off ;-)
@@rebane2001 Quite sure it does, maintains clock/(calendar) volitle bios config etc. but I don't think that is 'running'. Difference between commanded off (shutdown) and switched off as in no access to line power...
Ditto. use to dual boot (multiboot) Linux, BeOS, Win2K, and the BeOS was my default, even ran an EMU for AppleIIGS played tons of games on that marvel. Haiku is good, just missing to much for me to make the switch. recently went Linux full time on personal PC, might try to do the same on my work laptop, the IT department might get mad. LOL.
Great video, and nice to see a mention of OpenSolaris. The kernel and core userland of Solaris was forked as illumos, but the OpenSolaris distribution was forked as OpenIndiana. There are quite a few distros based on the illumos core, including some quite advanced ones such as SmartOS, designed for cloud computing.
@@RP-kr2mg I'd use linux in a second if they just speeded up the mouse pointer speed and increased the size of the font, makes it unusable, but if that was fixed, its a genuinely nice OS
Man oh man I remember BeOS back in the day! As I recall, it allowed the user to load the OS entirely into RAM from a CD or DVD so you didn't need to fully install it to try it out - so that's what I I did. It was fun for about 30 minutes, exploring how it does this or displays that - and then I had the sobering thought "what now? I can't load any software onto this whatsoever". And so, I rebooted into Windows and moved on. Kind of sad nothing became of it.
You forgot to mention that minix runs on pretty much every Intel PC these days inside the Management Engine that is built into every Intel CPU. This probably makes it the most widely-used OS you showed here.
@@NazmusLabs Jup. Just google "minix intel me" and you'll find loads of articles about it. The wikipedia article about the Intel ME also mentions this fact. I can't post direct links, they'll get my comment hidden.
Haiku is one of the best OSs I've tried in order to give new life to an old notebook. Its problem was that it didn't have my wifi card drivers and, you know, it is still on beta stage so it may be a little bit unstable. The good thing is that the project is aiming forward and that there is plenty of software available for most office needs (libre office, audio and video editors, blender for 3D design, etc) so it may have a good future.
@@PyroSyndicate how well developed is the thematic about disability and accessibility? Also, the multiple hardware ecosystem there exists does have any issue when is tried to plug it to the machine that runs those OSes with beautiful GUIs?
With Windows 10, the Insider Preview 19541, right now, is I can run my screen sensitive laptop connected to 2 75inches Samsung TVs with touch enabled accessory bars and one LG projector at 120inch size with a Wacom wireless tactile graphic tablet; because I need to amplify the screen the bigger the best. I don't know if with all these OSes I can have such flexibility.
@@taimurSM what can? Can you do a dictation in any available language? also can you sent complex commands? The Linux distro can tell you what are you pointing at or read the screen items for you? The system can zoom your screen at 1200% or up? I would like to test any OS that could that without sacrifice a lot of resources like Windows 10 is doing with my computer. Also, the OS must have wide availability of software for production. I've doing my own research and Linux apps are not very suitable for implement a robust help in such fields of working environments like I need daily. That is the why I've not do the switch. At this time, Linux is near the stage that Windows Mobile OS were left: a system with great possibilities not so explored due the lack of serious investments /desire for create good and strong apps.
I used to use BeOS it was great and way ahead of its time, if you put an audio cd in the OS would transparently show the tracks as Mp3 to play or copy/encode on the fly! i did eagerly follow haiku but lost interested when someone on the team said it wouldn't ever be more than a hobby os.
M Tea - most things on here will only be hobby OSes. Even the ones that try to provide say legacy support to OS/2 apps, will limit your future employability if you spend too much time wth them.
OS/2 was an amazing truly multitasking system. It was used in several platforms that required rock solid performance and steady multi-tasking. For instance the voice mail system we had for a 75 employee company ran on OS/2 with dialogic cards connected through a back end to our NEC mark 14 multi-trunk phone system which supported t-1 connectivity to our remote office with 15 more sales staff with heavy phone usage. We also ran an award winning system called Fax-O-Max which allowed people to dial in and enter a 4 digit code which ran in their print directory ads. The system would the fax, to a number they entered, a menu or whatever they had stored. An industry first and something I designed on a whim in the mid 90s to take advantage of the power of the system.
There are two updated version of OS/2 Warp. One is eComStaion, which seems stalled in development. The other is ArcaOS by Arca Nose. It is still being developed
Lotus Notes for email? Every conversion to MSmail from LN was a complete coin toss. One would take 5 minutes and work perfect and the next would take days and have to be picked through to find that one attachment or email causing everything to fail.
This is nice, but one thing I think belongs here is Qubes. People talk about it as a Linux distro, but it's more complex - it uses Xen (an entire OS dedicated to virtual machines), and Linux is just a compatibility layer for user interface and drivers and stuff. You can install Windows, FreeBSD, anything inside it. And various parts run in different VM's - the UI, each driver, and your applications are isolated. Its main focus is security - if the OS running your web browser, is separate from the OS running your hard drive, it's a lot harder for a virus or programming screw-up to affect the entire computer. Unless your last name is Snowden, it's probably overkill, but it's still interesting (and usable, if not spectacularly efficient).
@@MonsterHunterLancer Versions 1 through 10 of the Intel Management Engine (the thing that runs Minix) used an ARC processor. ARC being Argonaut RISC Core, named after Argonaut games and descended from the Super FX.
@@MonsterHunterLancer It wasn't ever as popular as ARM is now (I don't think so anyway) and I don't really know what else it was used in. In 2014 Synopsis said they licensed their ARC cores to over 190 companies who sold 1.5 billion products per year with ARC processors so obviously it was/is still very common.
I used opensolaris for a few months back in the day. I didn't have home internet, leeched off nearby open access points and was very interested in alternative operating systems. I had ended up downloading and burning an ISO of opensolaris to a CD for no particular reason. At some point, I accidentally nuked my windows install and was working with FreeDOS from a CD. Then I found and tried out that opensolaris disc. It was scratched up and took a couple attempts to install, but finally, I had a workable OS with a GUI. Due to my internet situation and noob status, nuking my Windows install would have meant a trip to the computer store with cash to get it reinstalled. I enjoyed using opensolaris for a few months before pulling myself up by the bootstraps by downloading a Windows XP ISO on someone else's connection. I had heard of UNIX but had no idea I had actually been using it. Thought it was just a command line only system that ran on obsolete servers.
I noticed the couple of Amiga-style operating systems have dropped a feature that I thought helped set it apart from the others. Back in the day, you could have arbitrarily sized desktop icons, and they didn't even have to be square or rectangular. Since the desktop understood image transparency, you could get really inventive with the look of your desktop. For example, a cloud icon would look like a cloud - not like a cloud-on-a-postage-stamp.
Even Amiga didn't really do that. Yeah it was possible and a lot of software did it but the OS was pretty standardised, and most people followed the standards (several times over!).
@@bobsagget823 People who enjoy fun, unexpected features in operating systems. For me, this was a feature of AmigaOS that helped set it apart from all others as a more enjoyable environment to work in,
FreeBSD, an Unix compatible system, is missing here. Worth mentioning also: Remix OS Otherwise cool list. There was some interesting systems I wasn't aware of. And a big plus for including TempleOS. ;-)
It was cool to se OS2/warp. I remembered I tried that system and noticed that the 3,5"-floppy didn't lag the system the way windows95 was lagged. Lol! 🙂 Regarding Solaris. I was expecting SunOS and i think "Oracle Solaris" is the succeeder, not the OpenSolaris. I think RaspberryPI OS is pretty cool and some guys managed to tweek a system for RaspberryPI4 they called TwisterOS. I had Ikaros (Aros) tested on my x86-system years ago. Also pretty cool system that MorphOS is based on.
@@abelardomarquez2506 That doesn't make it great. I preferred the BSD-based SunOS 4(?) instead of the AT&T SysV Solaris (SunOS 5?) I was a developer on DEC's Tru64 Unix, that was a good system. I focused on NFS and attended many Connectathons, so know many NFS developers for many OSes. And of course, VMS has been a very stable platform for decades, though I have very little experience with it.
@Dan Wood I was really interested in the FriendOS concent and just installed from source (very unstable) and then deployed the Docker container (very stable). I've been trying to reach devs for a few questions / features that aren't working but haven't had much luck. Since you said you're directly involved I thought I might shake the trees here.
Archimedes now that brings back happy memories. My dad ordered the PC's from England. We had been using them as far back as the BBC's. Needless to say we were not happy when they stopped making PC's. Going to Windows after using that, was like someone taking your sports car away and giving you a skateboard to work with :-( Especially when most people here if they had a computer were either using DOS or 3.1 or maybe 95. Back in 87 we already had 'windows' on a Archimedes while everyone else was using DOS. So never really took to Microsoft. Some of the Features we had on the Archimedes were only eventually covered by Windows in Windows 8!. But I must admit for what it could do, XP was the one that was usable didn't really take to 7 and oh man don't get me started on the mess that is 10. I'm now using Linux Mint and am very happy.
I switched to Linux Mint after frustrations with Windows 10. After some hesitation I fully ditched Win 10 and now love Mint. With Wine I can run some Windows software I didn't want to leave behind. All my software is now free, and with Libre Office its goodbye to MS office as well. I won't be going back.
I know very little about computers but was recently compelled to move from XP to Win 10. An unmitigated disaster with all those changes to accommodate the smartphone users. The end of computing as we knew it. I hate Windows 10.
I'm on Win-7, but because of the end of maintenance, with its attendant risk of virus infection, I'm facing a move to W-10 with some distaste, and I've been pondering a move to Linux instead. It's a problem, though, as a lot of Linux-compatible software is quite clunky by comparison. I was put on my guard by the insistence of Microsoft that I should load W-10, even sending it to me, unsolicited. Since then, I've read that running W-10 is like handing Microsoft a snooper's charter.
I boot up linux mint every couple months to see how far development has come. Still not a usable OS for gaming. And that's not likely going to change in the future
The OS I'm most excited about is NixOS, which is a fully declarative, functional (as in functional programming) OS. All the DevOps tools people have developed for managing Linux in the cloud is just kind of a native feature of the OS. There is no server drift, rollbacks are essentially instant, there is no such thing as dependency hell, etc. Unlike the others in this list, it has the potential to be a real staple. I would have also mentioned Fuscia from Google, which isn't finished yet, but if you're paying attention to OSs, that one would be on your radar.
Solaris was "created" when Sun moved from BSD based SunOS to SVR4 based. When they kept "backward compatibility", they had "uname" return part of its string value containing "SunOS", so sysadmins did not have to edit their scripts that checked the OS in heterogeneous environments (Sun, HP, IBM, etc.) as to know what commands to run. Solaris returned "SunOS5.x"on the SVR4 versons, with x being the Solaris version starting with 6 (Solaris 6= SunOS 5.6, Solaris 7= SunOS 5.7...and so on). I don't know if Oracle continued that or not...
Haiku and ReactOS are the ones I choose to support. ReactOS for replacing Windows and run legacy software and Haiku because BeOS was and still is my favorite OS of all time.
Yes, I have still somewhere a CD of BeOS. Somewhere… In my own first years I used OS2 for daily usage and programming Telemecanique PLC for the industry. It was indeed at that time beter sheduled as W95… But industrial programming uses W10 now, which is also good… by time. I getting old...
If you're going to include Amiga OS 4.1 then you should probably include Amiga OS 3.1.4 which was released far more recently by Hyperion Entertainment than OS 4.1 which, at this point, seems to be essentially an abandoned product as far as first party support and hardware to run it on is concerned.
@@GraphicalRanger I don't know how you can possibly call them piratical as they own the rights to Amiga OS up to 3.1. (as well as the rights to develop and market future Amiga OS releases). As for messing about it seems difficult to top the previous Amiga Inc who, as far as I can tell, no longer exists in a practical sense. Right now Hyperion are literally the only company supporting the original 68k machines and future Amiga OS releases. Otherwise the only other company with any rights to the Amiga trademark seems to be Cloanto who seem content to just release updated emulator packages each year.
you can buy retro Amiga 500 the size of a palm on Amazon for some $140 these days. Keyboard don't work but everything runs via USB and onscreen keyb. Comes with some 10 games preloaded but can run old software via USB key. I wonder if it could somehow be made to run video Toaster, old Amiga - TV interface...
Amigaaaaaaaa! Still love to play around with it on my Amiga 600 with Vampire card, my aim is to keep it up to date as possible, so much fun using a machine from decades ago and be able to use my dropbox,google drive and even watched youtube video's on it, listen to internet radio,play video's etc. And with with the vampire card you can do all of this on decent resolutions and everything runs very smooth. What i like about AmigaOS is how easy you can automate and customize almost everything,
One thing modern OSes still haven't caught up to is the buttry smoothness of BeOS even under heavy load or on low end hardware. You could turn off a CPU and the 11 videos you have playing wouldn't skip frames, your music wouldn't stutter. We threw hardware at the bloat and design faults of Windows and MacOS (which is really BSD with a colorful Mac wig on top) when BeOS' efficiency blew them all away almost 20 years ago. Computing would be very different today if BeOS had found its niche.
"OSes have caught up"? Who cares? The enhancements are usually quite meaningless or can be provided by other programs. The only exception being stability and speed. As I see it, the main point is to break free from the firm grip of M$ (or Apple, Google, etc.) and owning your system, instead of leasing it.
@@Banzai51 Sure, but it was you that brough up things being "amazing" or greatness. I'm basically just interested in peace, stability and freedom (from globalistic monopolistic companies).
@@Banzai51 exactly why Linux distros are not an option for gaming. There's many people that say it is, but after the past year of me using distros, hardly any of my games will actually run in WINE. Windows is the only option currently, until those programs become compatible with the OS natively, without needing crappy wine
Windows NT version 1 was OS/2, Gates took the OS/2 source and did a universal text replacement of DOS with WIN and sold it as NT ver 1.0. It took a number of versions before Microsoft was able to stop NT running OS/2 software. Today's Windows is the Microsoft updated version of that OS/2 code base. Today the four main desktop OS families are Windows/OS2 , MacOS, Linux, BSD.
I heard of Terry Davis and Temple OS back in the day. Did not think it was still around or heard of what happened to Terry RIP hope you got the reward you were seeking
The glaring omission in this video is of course the BSD Unix operating systems, particularly FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD. These have quite a decent userbase. Also of note that I thought should be included are MenuetOS, and QNX.
Illumos is still the better choice over Solaris, as it has people who were originally from Sun working on it, amongst other things (there’s an excellent lecture by Cantrill called Fork Yeah! that’s still on RUclips, that discusses this more in depth). Tribblix is from my understanding the most Desktop friendly distribution of it.
i run Linux mint and its getting bigger and im happy with it i have also started running risc os firstly for the nostalgia and its growing so im sticking with it on a SBC i like the look of both amiga and gem os because im old 😁 the only problem is as you say they are paid and i would rather have a 60 day trial before purchasing
Saw the doc on the guy and man did that dovetail down in the end. Healthcare is completely fucked up. In an alternative reality dude would be well and working as a programmer somewhere. What a waste... and loss.
I was surprised how sluggish it is, actually. Apparently it doesn't offer much in the way of hardware acceleration, so written in assembler or not, you won't get much responsiveness out of it.
@@thbenda i'm sorry but only in a very few usecases. basically those are when you have an HW the compiler does not know about. otherwise just fix your algorithm(s). and - considering the claim of the TS - writing the whole OS in asm is just insane from the maintenance standpoint alone.
@Anton Some people have a different perspective and do things as they need or as they can do it or as theirs customers need. So consider the context before any judgment. For my own point of view, I prefer using C++ to code any related drivers, sockets or systems related tasks. And you can always get asm from C++ compiled code in order to run on a system targeted.
illumos is an open source organisation which developes the open solaris code for a number of enterprise distributions including oios openindiana which has a mate workstation desktop and will be closely identified with Enterprise organisations or professionals. If you want a distribution closely identified with retail desktops there are many linux distributions within this segment. openindiana.org
React OS (especially the latest 0.4.12 alpha) is really good. We are running this as a main OS for our Living Room with custom Linux as Dualboot. This way originally a Win95 PC and its running very good... even the Win95 up to Win 8?1 compatability is working so good on 2Gb of RAM and 1Tb Storage...
@@simonestarace5249 "As Bell Labs has moved on to later projects in recent years, development of the official Plan 9 system has stopped. Unofficial development for the system continues on the 9front fork, where active contributors provide monthly builds and new functionality. So far, the 9front fork has provided the system Wi-Fi drivers, Audio drivers, USB support and built-in game emulator, along with other features.[16] Other recent Plan 9-inspired operating systems include Harvey OS[17] and Jehanne OS.[18]"
Menuet/Kollibri, BSD, Hurd, QNX... Oberon/Bluebottle? Probably nobody's heard of it outside the German-speaking world, but it's a fascinatingly odd graphical hypertext-based OS written in the Oberon programming language (something like Pascal/Modula, developed by the same man at the ETH Zürich) that did the rounds on freebie CDs in German PC magazines from the 90s/early 2000s. It looked so promising :(
My pardner and I developed a multitasking DOS/TSR(Terminate and Stay Resident) OS. Its functionality provide prioritized run queues, event wait and single threading resource queues. DOS and bios calls were single thead protected by a resource queue. It was part of our Here & There PC-DOS remote control software product. It was also used in the TRUEDATA 80186 based factory floor data collection terminals and their PC polling and management software.
@@frequentlycynical642 Yes but the net result still being the same: no ownership of your software, your OS, your hardware merely a dumb terminal. I'll pass on that past, and that future.
@@thedungeondelver same here. I'd rather do what I like with my software, including choosing to update, install, and modify it however I want. Online based OS sounds like a nightmare to me, and I'd rather run MS-DOS. I like BSD, but am stuck on Windows at the moment.
I tried BeOS when it was still alive. It seemed like a pretty good foundation, but there were hardly any programs so I couldn't do much on it. I'm sure Haiku has improved that aspect, but by how much?
@@chitlitlah I imagine at least Audacity, LibreOffice, GIMP, Blender, OBS, Firefox etc. are ported to Haiku. Prolly on other OSes on this list as well.
Loved OS/2 (2.? and Warp). This was before the internet was a thing. Instead we had BBS (Bulletin Board System), where you'd use your phone line to dial into a server to chat and download files. Couldn't believe how much more powerful my computer was when running OS/2 instead of Windows (3.0 or 3.1, I forget which). With OS/2 I could play a game while at the same time downloading something. In contrast, attempting to use Notepad under Windows resulted in the connection dropping out. It's a shame it did not become the mainstream OS.
Yes, I remember too. The BBS (RA = remote access) and FIDO NET (mailer frontdoor) ... in a DOS-Box. With 2 telephone lines my 386 was running 2 DOS boxes under OS/2 warp 3 (configured without the WPS. Running programs with GUI was still possible, starting them from a CMD shell.) Btw the WPS in warp3 has often crashed - so that mouse click and keystroke was not possible anymore. Somebody has programmed a third party tool named shutup. This worked, because it has recognized the keys of a joystick and killed (restarted?) the hanging WPS process. :-) Can not remember anymore if the bug was still in warp 4. I have lost my warp 4 CD. :-(
Well, Windows *NT* 3.1 came on the scene shortly after OS/2 and just creamed it in the marketplace. We were using OS/2 on 486 servers for performance and somebody had the gall to come in a boot up an NT CD-ROM. That's all it took, and we weren't even actively looking for an alternative to OS/2. And lest you think I'm dumping on IBM, I can proudly say I was raised on their MVS and VM "big iron" OSes. Gerstener was their downfall. "Cookie Monster".
Why was there no mention of FreeBSD ?? It is an awesome OS, and the Posix / Unix user-space applications on Mac OS X is based on FreeBSD's code. It has some OSes that derivate from it with specialized on Desktop use, NAS use, etc. Or generally the other BSD's that are out there like NetBSD and OpenBSD. Those deserve to be mentionend on such a high quality OS video. Cheers :-)
I remember checking out BeOS and BeBox back in my Amiga days. The OS looked quite interesting, but the BeBoxes cost an arm and a leg, so it was a nah...
Microsoft didn't drop out of OS/2 because of Windows. Windows was just supposed to be a UI for DOS (that's why it couldn't boot on its own and had to started from within DOS), whereas OS/2 was supposed to be a new OS that replaces DOS. They dropped out because there was a huge controversy between IBM and Microsoft programmers, as IBM programmers were used to write well written, well documented, well structured, well planed code - and Microsoft programmers were none of that. Realizing that this isn't going to work out, Microsoft decided to develop Windows into a full blown operation system on its own to prevent that IBM pushes them out of the market with their advanced OS/2. If OS/2 wouldn't have been to horribly overpriced, maybe everyone would be using OS/2 instead of Windows today as from a technical perspective it was way better than Windows and it could run Windows and MS-DOS software, so you got a better system and could keep all your existing apps. Yet being way more expensive than Windows and not being bundled with any of the shelf PCs, Microsoft won this battle.
I just like to mention, that I am still using an ATARI computer almost every day. Its an ATARI FALCON 060 This is, for those who dont know but would like to know, is the standard 68030 system, but its using a CT63 Daughter board with a Motorola 68060 CPU. The CPU is a stock 50MHZ but its over clocked. I have had 140Mhz out of it however for a rock solid machine, Its running at 90Mhz... I think its good for about 120Mhz and still stable, but there is not really taht much noticeable difference if I am honest, so 90 it is. Its also running a single stick of Crucial SDRAM and thats a 133Mhz stick What is also has, its another device called a CT-PCI whitch adds PCI slots to it. I am running an ATI 9200 Card and this lets me have PC-Level graphics, and again, while I have played at huge resolutions, its a bitr silly on such a machine and so I am running 1280x1024 whitch again is over the top, but great fun. The O/S that I am runnign on it, is MINT and that is very much Unix in so many ways... Or at least its an extention for the normal Operating system, that gives it unix power. It can and does run basic Linux X apps but is also 95% compatible wit hall well written Atari GEM software. The Desktop I am running is Jinnee 2.5 and this is fairly close to Cinnamon on modern Linux Distros. The ONLY issue that I do have, is that these extra bits mean that the computer no longer fits into its original case ( I am also using a PC PSU ) Its not as advanced as the later Amigas are, but its light years ahead of the simple green desktop of the ST computers.
Me either, as many pieces of the BSDs have made their way into Linux to improve it, most notably OpenSSH. But I also expected to see FreeDOS on the list, if not also Inferno, VisOpSys, and the desktop version of Genode (named Sculpt).
I was also surprised by the omission of the various BSD flavours. Admittedly, they tend to make better servers than desktops, but they are a more practical choice for actually getting anything done than many of the systems mentioned in the video that are often just toys.
@@timothybolshaw Possibly because he sees *BSDs as just Linux distros with a different kernel and much less support, which is partly true, because *BSDs lack an identity and personality of their own on the desktop. The other operating systems, although they may seem like toys, at least they offer something different, and that is the sad truth.
His videos were very interesting. It was sad watching him go on his racist rants yet you knew there was some work of genius going on inside his schizophrenia diseased head when he would go into details about his OS. The fact that he wrote his own version of C to write the OS shows you had to be insane.
@@TeagueChrystie Yes, he called it HolyC, a variant of C written in C/C++ is my understanding. I think he also wrote the compile from scratch in assembly.
Great video, I don't think most people even know there are any other Operating Systems besides the main 3. Thanks for all the hard work with this video.
Haiku sure has come a long way. However, today, the interface feels like frozen in time. Sure, in 2000, the BeOS interface was bleeding edge. Today, Haiku is missing many features you would expect from a modern interface. For instance, its application menu feels pretty dated. One flat listing of programmes, extending the edge of the screen, no integration of online services, such as Nextcloud, no building calendar, contacts, an extremely basic mail client. I'd love to use Haiku for real, but it is just missing too much that I rely on (the most important piece being 1. a decent web browser and 2 a nextcloud client or usable webdav integration.
I don’t mind the retro feel of Haiku, in fact I find it’s OS9 look and more importantly, speed, a feature. However, a modern browser is a huge oversight. Most of the things you state could be covered by a browser. The other huge oversight in 2021 with Haiku is lack of multiple monitor support. That’s just an extremely common workflow now.
My side project (which is an OS) is coming out on the 20th (well Beta 2 which would be the first usable and installable version). Just a shameless plug, but hey it's relevant haha. Got this video as a notification so clearly RUclips knows I'm into this haha
You should mention which programming languages and compilers are available on each of these operating systems. An O/S depends on applications to survive.
Oh, operating systems? Well, maybe some of my FORTH items are just languages on top of other operating systems, but at least two or three boot directly. One of them came as a Rockwell version of 6502 chip. I think the chip was labeled "RF6511" or "RCF6511". I still have that baby somewhere. Then another one booted directly on a Motorola VME development station. I still have that as well. Of course, none of the ones were GUI, that may now disqualify most anything text based. Other FORTH releases (anybody remember Laxen and Perry) ran on MS DOS -- up to 6.22 in my case and depended on the DOS for disk file access and so on. Then there were the BASIC systems on TRS-80 (on which I also had a direct boot FORTH), as well as the Hewlett Packard ROM BASIC which the 87 computer booted directly. And yes, I also still have somewhere a couple of DR-DOS versions ready to boot.
Haiku is great! illumos-based operating systems like OpenIndiana are also fantastic. Redox is a newer OS, but it’s developing fast and has brilliant devs.
With BSD mentioned in every other comment, it should probably be considered mainstream :P Also with OSX being a derivative, and I think some other domestic hardware running it, it might really be mainstream.
Well he missed the "big" ones-BDS, chromiumOS, and technically Android x86, all of which are more popular then anything on this video, not that any of these are really common os's
@@dantetehderp4896 no, they just use the Linux kernel(the Linux kernel mis developed separately from the rest), the rest of the is entirely different, and if your gonna say that's a problem then you forget some of the ones he showed also use the Linux kernel, so your point?
I was excited expecting you to mention Hurd, and you missed it :( Debian GNU/Hurd is a thing, it exists, works, there are demos of it and lectures about on it on RUclips too.
0:27 Haiku OS - seemed on video very similar to possibilities to QNX-mini, awesome but, all OS's so much gigabytes for just simple functions which can 16k to 2 mb do on same ram dimensions. Pixels, which new robots and high nano tech try to supply the huge industrial chain , been better before with much higher unlimited resolutions with so much simpler less code, fit on few bytes. What a world all became... losing everything. Simple RTOS worked very well even on IC (today bios) on Voyagers too. Who lied the world during millions years?
Haiku has been almost dead (or eternally beta) since 15+ years; BeOS in its day was really a GREAT option to windows and macos; I've ran it in an 8500 PowerPC and the stability and multimedia performance was far superior to both oses, and the colorful GUI was refreshing and intuitive keeping great icons macos-style; I enjoy your Retrohour podcast very much too, greetings from South America Dan!
Davis remained lucid when discussing computer-related subjects, his communication skills were significantly affected by his schizophrenia. He was controversial for his regular use of racial epithets, which he explained was his way of combating actors of psychological warfare. During his final months, he struggled with periods of homelessness and incarceration. In 2018, he was struck by a train and died at the age of 48. Investigators could not determine whether his death was suicide or accidental.
I think there is a case to resurrect the IBM AS400 model of bespoke hardware and OS as a veritically integrated and tightly controlled platform. The rationale would be that the system would be difficult to exploit due to the inability of bad actor to get the platform to look for vulnerabilities. That would make it more secure against exploit. Such a system could be used for a web-facing portal server that could act as a buffer for more common hardware and OS systems serving the back-end. Personally, I think the lack diversity for world-facing hardware and software is the cause of the major exploits against commercial and government systems that make most of data theft possible. It was once held that cloud computing would be more secure. However, there have already been significant breeches and there is a growing recognition that the vector of exploit is the lack of diversity of hardware and software. There may be a big opportunity to provide such highly vertical systems. Thoughts?
Others worth mentioning:
- FreeBSD (quite surprised it wasn't mentioned, as it's very well known in the industry)
- MenuetOS (programmed in assembly language, super efficient, although not enough software)
- Redox (young OS, programmed in Rust, remarkable for the progress in its latest release, already capable of playing Doom and Duke 3D, along with DOSBox for plenty of DOS games)
Fresh bonus item on the list: Serenity OS. The founder started a youtube channel, streaming the operating system's development, even working live on bugs, adding features, and even porting some games to the OS. Now they're also working on their own browser, which is something seen like an impossible task with so many standards nowadays.
Serenity OS is truly a geek-only item for now, because you have to compile the whole thing yourself, and run it in a virtual machine. But this is definitely worth a top spot on your bookmark list, because they're moving fast and even have employees. And what's great about their youtube activity is that they have monthly progress videos, where stuff is summarized nicely. Binging the monthly reports was awesome - it takes some time, but you can pretty much see how the OS shaped up into something better and better...
Odd FreeBSD was not in this list considering its actually used in enterprise
KolibriOS is a fork of Menuet that includes more software including a web browser and basic office software.
Rust doesn't sell it
freebsd is just linux with extra steps
I remember running OS/2 Warp back in the day. It really was a "Better Windows than Windows, Better DOS than DOS". It was absolutely hard to kill, and much more stable then either of them.
AND, it was a true 32-bit OS...
I used to use it too. Working on using the newer versions of it.
Yeah, but too bad, it was not useful for anything..
I remember rushing to buy OS/2 Warp when it was released - unfortunately, it ran like a sloth that took benzodiazepines on my machine (around half the speed of the current Windows at the time). It lasted 2 days before I uninstalled it.
It was easy to make OS/2 faster:
1. more RAM.
2. loose the Workplace Shell. It was an OO-based shell, the likes I have never seen again, but it was HEAVY. MiniShell gave far better performance, while being able to run all Windows 3 and OS/2 applications. With TShell, ypu could run it with 2 MB RAM, as a server in text-mode.
I demoed Minishell on a 386sx and 10 MB RAM and performance was zippy!
When using Haiku
Expect frequent encounters
With faults and poems
Haiku, the OS
Some think Apple should have bought
Instead of NeXTStep...
Hear it, you may not.
But smell it you will!
Silence is deadly.
Errors have happened
we do not know how or why
lazy programmers
Lmao you got me 😂😂😂
Fancy bumping in
To you here, Custardo. Fan
See bumping indeed.
This video is a goldmine for geeks loving to explore some very obscure OS's! Thanks for the suggestions, will definitely try some of them! I've only tried ReactOS and Minix so far, the rest is almost completely unknown to me...
did not expect temple OS on here. Props
Listen to a nice piece about TempleOS on BBC Radio 4 last year, nice to see what it looked like :)
PotateJello It should go open source. We should all be programming kexts in Holy C.
@@askhowiknow5527 its public domain
I clicked on this just to see if Temple OS was on the list.
It's nice to see it again, well deserving of a full feature vid.
Still kinda stings hey.
What that dude made is beyond known maths.
10:43 Many don't realise, that they have MINIX embedded inside of their Intel processor, up and running even when the computer is "powered off".
BSD family systems, like FreeBSD are missing, despite having much larger user groups than many mentioned here.
MINIX in Intel - running when powered off ??? How run when powered off? or "pwr off" vs Pwr Off (really)?
That's right. When the computer is connected to a power socket, some components are already powered up, even when the computer is not fully "started-up". This allows to "wake up on LAN" or, in this case, perform some computer maintenance tasks remotely even when the user turned the computer down.
www.zdnet.com/article/minix-intels-hidden-in-chip-operating-system/
@@krzychaczu Ah - yes, - tend to not think about that but makes much sense -- However I run my systems off switchable power strip & after 'shutdown' finishes I usually flip the switch on the power bar = really off ;-)
@@davidm.4670 Your motherboard probably has a battery on it
@@rebane2001 Quite sure it does, maintains clock/(calendar) volitle bios config etc. but I don't think that is 'running'.
Difference between commanded off (shutdown) and switched off as in no access to line power...
I wish ReactOS was moving more quickly in development. It'd be nice to have a meaningful, fully working alternative to Microsoft's Windows.
For an OS, it moves really slow. It's an open source Windows 2000/XP.
@@AstroKitty16 I've played with it. And it just randomly crashes for no reason ...
@@kienhwengtai8113 Like the real Windows...
working alt to Win ~ linux ...
@@davidm.4670 Linux isn't an alternative to Windows, however badly we may wish it was.
Great video!
That wallpaper on the Amiga OS 4 was a nice touch. SAAB 900 is a classic!
So was the shot of the Pi atop an Amiga
I was a hardcore BeOS user. I loved the speed and the security. When Be died, a piece of me did, too
Be could have been the next MacOS, but politics.
@@billysherman2702 no politics, Apple just decided they wanted something UNIX-like instead of BeOS.
Ditto. use to dual boot (multiboot) Linux, BeOS, Win2K, and the BeOS was my default, even ran an EMU for AppleIIGS played tons of games on that marvel. Haiku is good, just missing to much for me to make the switch. recently went Linux full time on personal PC, might try to do the same on my work laptop, the IT department might get mad. LOL.
I was worried this would just be a bunch of linux distros, but there were so many cool and niche os listed here! Awesome video!
Legend has it Haiku's REAL source code is only 3 lines of code.
@Nicolás Agustín and the third line number command is 'goto line 1' ... 😁
and the 3 lines has a 5/7/5 syllable count lol
def haiku():
beos()
haiku()
Great video, and nice to see a mention of OpenSolaris. The kernel and core userland of Solaris was forked as illumos, but the OpenSolaris distribution was forked as OpenIndiana. There are quite a few distros based on the illumos core, including some quite advanced ones such as SmartOS, designed for cloud computing.
SmartOS is a great one. Very niche, though.
So... This explains why the "big three" are the "big three" operating systems
How so?
Because they are shit compared to the big 3
@@zymagoras ...but Haiku has potential . It needs a leap of " iteration" . I'm afraid the developers will die off before Haiku reaches 1.0.
Linux - Debian - Ubuntu - ZorinOS!
@@RP-kr2mg I'd use linux in a second if they just speeded up the mouse pointer speed and increased the size of the font, makes it unusable, but if that was fixed, its a genuinely nice OS
Glad to see RISC OS getting some love. A tiny OS with big potential.
It rose again in popularity because of the Raspberry Pi.
@@markarca6360 I agree. I think it becoming Open Source also helped a too. But yeah, Raspberry Pi opened the door.
Debian is better than arch. And debian is only if you can compile your own programs from scratch
@@lordzeuscannon6400 both are equally good, despite being day and night.
RISC os on x86???
Man oh man I remember BeOS back in the day! As I recall, it allowed the user to load the OS entirely into RAM from a CD or DVD so you didn't need to fully install it to try it out - so that's what I I did. It was fun for about 30 minutes, exploring how it does this or displays that - and then I had the sobering thought "what now? I can't load any software onto this whatsoever". And so, I rebooted into Windows and moved on. Kind of sad nothing became of it.
You forgot to mention that minix runs on pretty much every Intel PC these days inside the Management Engine that is built into every Intel CPU. This probably makes it the most widely-used OS you showed here.
wait seriously?! I need to know more about its history!
May Allah (S.W.T.) guide you and bestow upon you His Blessings; Ameen.
@@NazmusLabs Jup. Just google "minix intel me" and you'll find loads of articles about it. The wikipedia article about the Intel ME also mentions this fact. I can't post direct links, they'll get my comment hidden.
Haiku is one of the best OSs I've tried in order to give new life to an old notebook. Its problem was that it didn't have my wifi card drivers and, you know, it is still on beta stage so it may be a little bit unstable. The good thing is that the project is aiming forward and that there is plenty of software available for most office needs (libre office, audio and video editors, blender for 3D design, etc) so it may have a good future.
There are Linux distros that will run fine on the oldest of slow computers.
@@johnarnold893 and?
An OS without apps is like a city without people...
Exactly! That is why I opt for beautiful Linux. I will try Harmony when it is available.
You should see the suite they have on the friend one! There are office apps, games software dev apps, alot more like!
@@PyroSyndicate how well developed is the thematic about disability and accessibility? Also, the multiple hardware ecosystem there exists does have any issue when is tried to plug it to the machine that runs those OSes with beautiful GUIs?
With Windows 10, the Insider Preview 19541, right now, is I can run my screen sensitive laptop connected to 2 75inches Samsung TVs with touch enabled accessory bars and one LG projector at 120inch size with a Wacom wireless tactile graphic tablet; because I need to amplify the screen the bigger the best. I don't know if with all these OSes I can have such flexibility.
@@taimurSM what can? Can you do a dictation in any available language? also can you sent complex commands? The Linux distro can tell you what are you pointing at or read the screen items for you? The system can zoom your screen at 1200% or up? I would like to test any OS that could that without sacrifice a lot of resources like Windows 10 is doing with my computer. Also, the OS must have wide availability of software for production. I've doing my own research and Linux apps are not very suitable for implement a robust help in such fields of working environments like I need daily. That is the why I've not do the switch. At this time, Linux is near the stage that Windows Mobile OS were left: a system with great possibilities not so explored due the lack of serious investments /desire for create good and strong apps.
I'm just stoked you went the whole time without mentioning Plan 9 :D
I used to use BeOS it was great and way ahead of its time, if you put an audio cd in the OS would transparently show the tracks as Mp3 to play or copy/encode on the fly!
i did eagerly follow haiku but lost interested when someone on the team said it wouldn't ever be more than a hobby os.
M Tea - most things on here will only be hobby OSes. Even the ones that try to provide say legacy support to OS/2 apps, will limit your future employability if you spend too much time wth them.
Audio CD songs aren't encoded as MP3s...
"amazingly alternative" rather than "amazing alternative".
Bro... you're not going to BELIEVE how alternative this is. Amazingly so!
I mean yeah, amazingly alternative is the right way to put most of these.
@@kwanele_dev Nonsense.
This phrasing stuck out with me as well. It worked
Amazing alternatively operating systems.
OS/2 was an amazing truly multitasking system. It was used in several platforms that required rock solid performance and steady multi-tasking. For instance the voice mail system we had for a 75 employee company ran on OS/2 with dialogic cards connected through a back end to our NEC mark 14 multi-trunk phone system which supported t-1 connectivity to our remote office with 15 more sales staff with heavy phone usage. We also ran an award winning system called Fax-O-Max which allowed people to dial in and enter a 4 digit code which ran in their print directory ads. The system would the fax, to a number they entered, a menu or whatever they had stored. An industry first and something I designed on a whim in the mid 90s to take advantage of the power of the system.
There are two updated version of OS/2 Warp. One is eComStaion, which seems stalled in development. The other is ArcaOS by Arca Nose. It is still being developed
On a dare I made OS/2 Warp 3&4 VM's. I still start them up every so often just to play.
Lotus Notes for email? Every conversion to MSmail from LN was a complete coin toss. One would take 5 minutes and work perfect and the next would take days and have to be picked through to find that one attachment or email causing everything to fail.
This is nice, but one thing I think belongs here is Qubes. People talk about it as a Linux distro, but it's more complex - it uses Xen (an entire OS dedicated to virtual machines), and Linux is just a compatibility layer for user interface and drivers and stuff. You can install Windows, FreeBSD, anything inside it. And various parts run in different VM's - the UI, each driver, and your applications are isolated.
Its main focus is security - if the OS running your web browser, is separate from the OS running your hard drive, it's a lot harder for a virus or programming screw-up to affect the entire computer. Unless your last name is Snowden, it's probably overkill, but it's still interesting (and usable, if not spectacularly efficient).
fun fact:if you have an intel cpu you are already running a hidden embedded version of minix
Running on a descendant of the Super FX chip for the SNES.
@@MonsterHunterLancer Versions 1 through 10 of the Intel Management Engine (the thing that runs Minix) used an ARC processor. ARC being Argonaut RISC Core, named after Argonaut games and descended from the Super FX.
@@MonsterHunterLancer It wasn't ever as popular as ARM is now (I don't think so anyway) and I don't really know what else it was used in. In 2014 Synopsis said they licensed their ARC cores to over 190 companies who sold 1.5 billion products per year with ARC processors so obviously it was/is still very common.
@@stellated man you guys are interesting. Where can i find more useful comments like this?
It's also usable as a spy device
Amazing, escpecially the last one is a creative genious one. Thanks for showing!!
I used opensolaris for a few months back in the day. I didn't have home internet, leeched off nearby open access points and was very interested in alternative operating systems. I had ended up downloading and burning an ISO of opensolaris to a CD for no particular reason. At some point, I accidentally nuked my windows install and was working with FreeDOS from a CD. Then I found and tried out that opensolaris disc. It was scratched up and took a couple attempts to install, but finally, I had a workable OS with a GUI. Due to my internet situation and noob status, nuking my Windows install would have meant a trip to the computer store with cash to get it reinstalled. I enjoyed using opensolaris for a few months before pulling myself up by the bootstraps by downloading a Windows XP ISO on someone else's connection. I had heard of UNIX but had no idea I had actually been using it. Thought it was just a command line only system that ran on obsolete servers.
I noticed the couple of Amiga-style operating systems have dropped a feature that I thought helped set it apart from the others. Back in the day, you could have arbitrarily sized desktop icons, and they didn't even have to be square or rectangular. Since the desktop understood image transparency, you could get really inventive with the look of your desktop. For example, a cloud icon would look like a cloud - not like a cloud-on-a-postage-stamp.
or when you loaded a CD the icon usually covered 75% of available desktop space
Even Amiga didn't really do that. Yeah it was possible and a lot of software did it but the OS was pretty standardised, and most people followed the standards (several times over!).
who cares
@@bobsagget823 People who enjoy fun, unexpected features in operating systems. For me, this was a feature of AmigaOS that helped set it apart from all others as a more enjoyable environment to work in,
I really enjoyed this video Dan. Like several flashbacks in one short sitting. Excellent. I look forward to viewing your other stuff. Kudos!
FreeBSD, an Unix compatible system, is missing here.
Worth mentioning also: Remix OS
Otherwise cool list. There was some interesting systems I wasn't aware of. And a big plus for including TempleOS. ;-)
It was cool to se OS2/warp. I remembered I tried that system and noticed that the 3,5"-floppy didn't lag the system the way windows95 was lagged. Lol! 🙂
Regarding Solaris. I was expecting SunOS and i think "Oracle Solaris" is the succeeder, not the OpenSolaris.
I think RaspberryPI OS is pretty cool and some guys managed to tweek a system for RaspberryPI4 they called TwisterOS.
I had Ikaros (Aros) tested on my x86-system years ago. Also pretty cool system that MorphOS is based on.
Solaris was a great operating system until Oracle brought Sun.
No it wasn't.
@@ejwerme Yes, it was and still used today by Ericsson for many applications for mobile companies.
@@abelardomarquez2506 That doesn't make it great. I preferred the BSD-based SunOS 4(?) instead of the AT&T SysV Solaris (SunOS 5?)
I was a developer on DEC's Tru64 Unix, that was a good system. I focused on NFS and attended many Connectathons, so know many NFS developers for many OSes.
And of course, VMS has been a very stable platform for decades, though I have very little experience with it.
ANYTHING was great before Oracle bought it.
@@KRAFTWERK2K6 I was going to say the same....
The wallpaper of uptown Charlotte around the 3-minute mark is awesome!
@Dan Wood
I was really interested in the FriendOS concent and just installed from source (very unstable) and then deployed the Docker container (very stable). I've been trying to reach devs for a few questions / features that aren't working but haven't had much luck. Since you said you're directly involved I thought I might shake the trees here.
Very awesome explanation of OSes and how they have continued ...
Archimedes now that brings back happy memories. My dad ordered the PC's from England. We had been using them as far back as the BBC's. Needless to say we were not happy when they stopped making PC's. Going to Windows after using that, was like someone taking your sports car away and giving you a skateboard to work with :-( Especially when most people here if they had a computer were either using DOS or 3.1 or maybe 95. Back in 87 we already had 'windows' on a Archimedes while everyone else was using DOS. So never really took to Microsoft. Some of the Features we had on the Archimedes were only eventually covered by Windows in Windows 8!. But I must admit for what it could do, XP was the one that was usable didn't really take to 7 and oh man don't get me started on the mess that is 10. I'm now using Linux Mint and am very happy.
I switched to Linux Mint after frustrations with Windows 10. After some hesitation I fully ditched Win 10 and now love Mint. With Wine I can run some Windows software I didn't want to leave behind. All my software is now free, and with Libre Office its goodbye to MS office as well.
I won't be going back.
I know very little about computers but was recently compelled to move from XP to Win 10. An unmitigated disaster with all those changes to accommodate the smartphone users. The end of computing as we knew it. I hate Windows 10.
I'm on Win-7, but because of the end of maintenance, with its attendant risk of virus infection, I'm facing a move to W-10 with some distaste, and I've been pondering a move to Linux instead. It's a problem, though, as a lot of Linux-compatible software is quite clunky by comparison.
I was put on my guard by the insistence of Microsoft that I should load W-10, even sending it to me, unsolicited. Since then, I've read that running W-10 is like handing Microsoft a snooper's charter.
I boot up linux mint every couple months to see how far development has come. Still not a usable OS for gaming. And that's not likely going to change in the future
BeOS was the most expensive operating system I ever had ... when I found that my stake in this company was just penny stocks when it crashed ...
Of course, back in the day the things were different. Although Be Inc was too expensive even for Apple standards.
The OS I'm most excited about is NixOS, which is a fully declarative, functional (as in functional programming) OS. All the DevOps tools people have developed for managing Linux in the cloud is just kind of a native feature of the OS. There is no server drift, rollbacks are essentially instant, there is no such thing as dependency hell, etc. Unlike the others in this list, it has the potential to be a real staple. I would have also mentioned Fuscia from Google, which isn't finished yet, but if you're paying attention to OSs, that one would be on your radar.
Functional as in Rust functional? or "functional" as in Python.
Solaris was "created" when Sun moved from BSD based SunOS to SVR4 based. When they kept "backward compatibility", they had "uname" return part of its string value containing "SunOS", so sysadmins did not have to edit their scripts that checked the OS in heterogeneous environments (Sun, HP, IBM, etc.) as to know what commands to run. Solaris returned "SunOS5.x"on the SVR4 versons, with x being the Solaris version starting with 6 (Solaris 6= SunOS 5.6, Solaris 7= SunOS 5.7...and so on). I don't know if Oracle continued that or not...
Haiku and ReactOS are the ones I choose to support. ReactOS for replacing Windows and run legacy software and Haiku because BeOS was and still is my favorite OS of all time.
agreed. I know this is two years old but I'm still holding out for ReactOS, but Haiku is decent and 100% usable for general purpose stuff.
Yes, I have still somewhere a CD of BeOS. Somewhere… In my own first years I used OS2 for daily usage and programming Telemecanique PLC for the industry. It was indeed at that time beter sheduled as W95… But industrial programming uses W10 now, which is also good… by time. I getting old...
ReactOS is terrible, Frank. 25+ years of development and it's still in alpha.
Stumbled on this channel. Thank you. Top quality video. Subscribed.
If you're going to include Amiga OS 4.1 then you should probably include Amiga OS 3.1.4 which was released far more recently by Hyperion Entertainment than OS 4.1 which, at this point, seems to be essentially an abandoned product as far as first party support and hardware to run it on is concerned.
But it still runs! You can't kill it. OS3.1 was truly abandoned for many years and we kept it alive anyway.
Not interested in the Hyperion piratical manouvers with 3.1 until they stop messing about!
@@GraphicalRanger I don't know how you can possibly call them piratical as they own the rights to Amiga OS up to 3.1. (as well as the rights to develop and market future Amiga OS releases). As for messing about it seems difficult to top the previous Amiga Inc who, as far as I can tell, no longer exists in a practical sense. Right now Hyperion are literally the only company supporting the original 68k machines and future Amiga OS releases. Otherwise the only other company with any rights to the Amiga trademark seems to be Cloanto who seem content to just release updated emulator packages each year.
I love this video. I'd still like to see a deeper dive into each contender in this list.
wow I don't think I have discovered this much OS info I had no idea existed thanks for the awesome video
you can buy retro Amiga 500 the size of a palm on Amazon for some $140 these days. Keyboard don't work but everything runs via USB and onscreen keyb. Comes with some 10 games preloaded but can run old software via USB key. I wonder if it could somehow be made to run video Toaster, old Amiga - TV interface...
Amigaaaaaaaa!
Still love to play around with it on my Amiga 600 with Vampire card, my aim is to keep it up to date as possible, so much fun using a machine from decades ago and be able to use my dropbox,google drive and even watched youtube video's on it, listen to internet radio,play video's etc.
And with with the vampire card you can do all of this on decent resolutions and everything runs very smooth.
What i like about AmigaOS is how easy you can automate and customize almost everything,
I loved BeOS back in the day. But now, all the other OSes have caught up to everything it did that was amazing in the 90s.
One thing modern OSes still haven't caught up to is the buttry smoothness of BeOS even under heavy load or on low end hardware. You could turn off a CPU and the 11 videos you have playing wouldn't skip frames, your music wouldn't stutter.
We threw hardware at the bloat and design faults of Windows and MacOS (which is really BSD with a colorful Mac wig on top) when BeOS' efficiency blew them all away almost 20 years ago. Computing would be very different today if BeOS had found its niche.
"OSes have caught up"? Who cares? The enhancements are usually quite meaningless or can be provided by other programs. The only exception being stability and speed. As I see it, the main point is to break free from the firm grip of M$ (or Apple, Google, etc.) and owning your system, instead of leasing it.
@@herrbonk3635 You can have the greatest OS in the world but if it doesn't run your apps, it is useless.
@@Banzai51 Sure, but it was you that brough up things being "amazing" or greatness. I'm basically just interested in peace, stability and freedom (from globalistic monopolistic companies).
@@Banzai51 exactly why Linux distros are not an option for gaming. There's many people that say it is, but after the past year of me using distros, hardly any of my games will actually run in WINE. Windows is the only option currently, until those programs become compatible with the OS natively, without needing crappy wine
Solaris is not UNIX-based. It is UNIX.
System V is "classic UNIX" actually, everything else just adheres to the POSIX standard. Solaris was SUN's take on UNIX for their Spark stations.
@@CptMooney Version 7 is true classic Unix.
Tobias Stamenkovic it’s still certified UNIX
Open solaris (open indiana) is UNIX-alike OS
Interestingly MacOS is a true Unix system (not Unix like) as well.
Windows NT version 1 was OS/2, Gates took the OS/2 source and did a universal text replacement of DOS with WIN and sold it as NT ver 1.0. It took a number of versions before Microsoft was able to stop NT running OS/2 software. Today's Windows is the Microsoft updated version of that OS/2 code base. Today the four main desktop OS families are Windows/OS2 , MacOS, Linux, BSD.
I heard of Terry Davis and Temple OS back in the day. Did not think it was still around or heard of what happened to Terry RIP hope you got the reward you were seeking
they got rid of him from the /g/ sticky :(
The glaring omission in this video is of course the BSD Unix operating systems, particularly FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD. These have quite a decent userbase. Also of note that I thought should be included are MenuetOS, and QNX.
Illumos is still the better choice over Solaris, as it has people who were originally from Sun working on it, amongst other things (there’s an excellent lecture by Cantrill called Fork Yeah! that’s still on RUclips, that discusses this more in depth). Tribblix is from my understanding the most Desktop friendly distribution of it.
i run Linux mint and its getting bigger and im happy with it
i have also started running risc os firstly for the nostalgia and its growing so im sticking with it on a SBC
i like the look of both amiga and gem os because im old 😁 the only problem is as you say they are paid and i would rather have a 60 day trial before purchasing
I use Amiga OS 3.9, i'm still working on the same AMOS project since 1998.
Rest in peace Terry. You will be missed.
Saw the doc on the guy and man did that dovetail down in the end. Healthcare is completely fucked up. In an alternative reality dude would be well and working as a programmer somewhere. What a waste... and loss.
what doc?have a link?
@@Greenberet. ruclips.net/video/UCgoxQCf5Jg/видео.html
thanks!
MenuetOS : fast (thanks to the asm language), usuable and responsive !
I was surprised how sluggish it is, actually. Apparently it doesn't offer much in the way of hardware acceleration, so written in assembler or not, you won't get much responsiveness out of it.
writing in asm for modern ISAs is not very smart to say the least
asm is ok. very low level to program something nowadays, but it is ok... in many usecases.
@@thbenda i'm sorry but only in a very few usecases. basically those are when you have an HW the compiler does not know about. otherwise just fix your algorithm(s).
and - considering the claim of the TS - writing the whole OS in asm is just insane from the maintenance standpoint alone.
@Anton Some people have a different perspective and do things as they need or as they can do it or as theirs customers need. So consider the context before any judgment. For my own point of view, I prefer using C++ to code any related drivers, sockets or systems related tasks.
And you can always get asm from C++ compiled code in order to run on a system targeted.
Great collection video. Thanks for making & sharing. I had no idea Minix is still alive!
This week I have been mostly using Amiga Workbench 2.05.
illumos is an open source organisation which developes the open solaris code for a number of enterprise distributions including oios openindiana which has a mate workstation desktop and will be closely identified with Enterprise organisations or professionals. If you want a distribution closely identified with retail desktops there are many linux distributions within this segment. openindiana.org
I was like "That's BeOS! why is it called Haiku!?..... That's so cool!" :D
BeOS would display a haiku poem when it issued an error message .
I believe this inspired the name .
Great video, I had no idea about Illumos, very cool!
React OS (especially the latest 0.4.12 alpha) is really good. We are running this as a main OS for our Living Room with custom Linux as Dualboot.
This way originally a Win95 PC and its running very good... even the Win95 up to Win 8?1 compatability is working so good on 2Gb of RAM and 1Tb Storage...
Why would you have 2gigs of ram with 1 terabyte of storage?!?!
A list of obscure OSes should include Plan 9.
Isn't this a Distributed Operating System that doesn't receive any more support?
@@simonestarace5249 "As Bell Labs has moved on to later projects in recent years, development of the official Plan 9 system has stopped. Unofficial development for the system continues on the 9front fork, where active contributors provide monthly builds and new functionality. So far, the 9front fork has provided the system Wi-Fi drivers, Audio drivers, USB support and built-in game emulator, along with other features.[16] Other recent Plan 9-inspired operating systems include Harvey OS[17] and Jehanne OS.[18]"
@@darkstorminc Never heard of those 2 OS. Thanks for the info.
Inferno is the name of its successor :)
9front is better.
Menuet/Kollibri, BSD, Hurd, QNX... Oberon/Bluebottle? Probably nobody's heard of it outside the German-speaking world, but it's a fascinatingly odd graphical hypertext-based OS written in the Oberon programming language (something like Pascal/Modula, developed by the same man at the ETH Zürich) that did the rounds on freebie CDs in German PC magazines from the 90s/early 2000s. It looked so promising :(
My pardner and I developed a multitasking DOS/TSR(Terminate and Stay Resident) OS. Its functionality provide prioritized run queues, event wait and single threading resource queues. DOS and bios calls were single thead protected by a resource queue. It was part of our Here & There PC-DOS remote control software product. It was also used in the TRUEDATA 80186 based factory floor data collection terminals and their PC polling and management software.
"A new concept called sky computing". I would like to introduce its creators to time-share systems from the 1960s...
Exactly what I thought! In reality, "the cloud" is still computers connected by cables. Once copper, now fiber. And not limited to being nearby.
@@frequentlycynical642 Yes but the net result still being the same: no ownership of your software, your OS, your hardware merely a dumb terminal. I'll pass on that past, and that future.
@@thedungeondelver same here. I'd rather do what I like with my software, including choosing to update, install, and modify it however I want. Online based OS sounds like a nightmare to me, and I'd rather run MS-DOS. I like BSD, but am stuck on Windows at the moment.
And terminal servers, from the 1970's up to today. Think of Azure for a commercialised version.
It's like deja vu all over again.
-Yogi Berra
Enlightening video ! Gave insights of many OS systems that could not come gain popularity.
OK, you've got the OS. Now, where do you get something that runs on it? :)
This is the question!) see Windows Mobile)
I tried BeOS when it was still alive. It seemed like a pretty good foundation, but there were hardly any programs so I couldn't do much on it. I'm sure Haiku has improved that aspect, but by how much?
@@chitlitlah I imagine at least Audacity, LibreOffice, GIMP, Blender, OBS, Firefox etc. are ported to Haiku. Prolly on other OSes on this list as well.
I would've liked to hear about Plan 9. The architecture has always appealed to me.
Loved OS/2 (2.? and Warp). This was before the internet was a thing. Instead we had BBS (Bulletin Board System), where you'd use your phone line to dial into a server to chat and download files. Couldn't believe how much more powerful my computer was when running OS/2 instead of Windows (3.0 or 3.1, I forget which). With OS/2 I could play a game while at the same time downloading something. In contrast, attempting to use Notepad under Windows resulted in the connection dropping out. It's a shame it did not become the mainstream OS.
Yes, I remember too. The BBS (RA = remote access) and FIDO NET (mailer frontdoor) ... in a DOS-Box. With 2 telephone lines my 386 was running 2 DOS boxes under OS/2 warp 3 (configured without the WPS. Running programs with GUI was still possible, starting them from a CMD shell.)
Btw the WPS in warp3 has often crashed - so that mouse click and keystroke was not possible anymore. Somebody has programmed a third party tool named shutup. This worked, because it has recognized the keys of a joystick and killed (restarted?) the hanging WPS process. :-)
Can not remember anymore if the bug was still in warp 4. I have lost my warp 4 CD. :-(
Well, Windows *NT* 3.1 came on the scene shortly after OS/2 and just creamed it in the marketplace. We were using OS/2 on 486 servers for performance and somebody had the gall to come in a boot up an NT CD-ROM. That's all it took, and we weren't even actively looking for an alternative to OS/2. And lest you think I'm dumping on IBM, I can proudly say I was raised on their MVS and VM "big iron" OSes. Gerstener was their downfall. "Cookie Monster".
Why was there no mention of FreeBSD ?? It is an awesome OS, and the Posix / Unix user-space applications on Mac OS X is based on FreeBSD's code. It has some OSes that derivate from it with specialized on Desktop use, NAS use, etc. Or generally the other BSD's that are out there like
NetBSD and OpenBSD. Those deserve to be mentionend on such a high quality OS video. Cheers :-)
also the switch's os is based on freebsd
Be Os was awesome Pre Windows XP!
I remember checking out BeOS and BeBox back in my Amiga days. The OS looked quite interesting, but the BeBoxes cost an arm and a leg, so it was a nah...
Microsoft didn't drop out of OS/2 because of Windows. Windows was just supposed to be a UI for DOS (that's why it couldn't boot on its own and had to started from within DOS), whereas OS/2 was supposed to be a new OS that replaces DOS. They dropped out because there was a huge controversy between IBM and Microsoft programmers, as IBM programmers were used to write well written, well documented, well structured, well planed code - and Microsoft programmers were none of that. Realizing that this isn't going to work out, Microsoft decided to develop Windows into a full blown operation system on its own to prevent that IBM pushes them out of the market with their advanced OS/2. If OS/2 wouldn't have been to horribly overpriced, maybe everyone would be using OS/2 instead of Windows today as from a technical perspective it was way better than Windows and it could run Windows and MS-DOS software, so you got a better system and could keep all your existing apps. Yet being way more expensive than Windows and not being bundled with any of the shelf PCs, Microsoft won this battle.
I just like to mention, that I am still using an ATARI computer almost every day.
Its an ATARI FALCON 060
This is, for those who dont know but would like to know, is the standard 68030 system, but its using a CT63 Daughter board with a Motorola 68060 CPU. The CPU is a stock 50MHZ but its over clocked. I have had 140Mhz out of it however for a rock solid machine, Its running at 90Mhz... I think its good for about 120Mhz and still stable, but there is not really taht much noticeable difference if I am honest, so 90 it is.
Its also running a single stick of Crucial SDRAM and thats a 133Mhz stick
What is also has, its another device called a CT-PCI whitch adds PCI slots to it.
I am running an ATI 9200 Card and this lets me have PC-Level graphics, and again, while I have played at huge resolutions, its a bitr silly on such a machine and so I am running 1280x1024 whitch again is over the top, but great fun.
The O/S that I am runnign on it, is MINT and that is very much Unix in so many ways... Or at least its an extention for the normal Operating system, that gives it unix power. It can and does run basic Linux X apps but is also 95% compatible wit hall well written Atari GEM software.
The Desktop I am running is Jinnee 2.5 and this is fairly close to Cinnamon on modern Linux Distros.
The ONLY issue that I do have, is that these extra bits mean that the computer no longer fits into its original case ( I am also using a PC PSU )
Its not as advanced as the later Amigas are, but its light years ahead of the simple green desktop of the ST computers.
I can't believe he didn't talk about BSD based operating systems!
Me either, as many pieces of the BSDs have made their way into Linux to improve it, most notably OpenSSH. But I also expected to see FreeDOS on the list, if not also Inferno, VisOpSys, and the desktop version of Genode (named Sculpt).
I was also surprised by the omission of the various BSD flavours. Admittedly, they tend to make better servers than desktops, but they are a more practical choice for actually getting anything done than many of the systems mentioned in the video that are often just toys.
@@timothybolshaw Possibly because he sees *BSDs as just Linux distros with a different kernel and much less support, which is partly true, because *BSDs lack an identity and personality of their own on the desktop.
The other operating systems, although they may seem like toys, at least they offer something different, and that is the sad truth.
BSDs are a distant fourth, but still way more mainstream than anything on this video.
I'm lost and confused, are y'all talking about Blue Screen of Death or something not explained to someone who doesn't speak ACRONYM!?
I remember running BeOS on a Thinkpad I had way back when. I was really just starting to learn modern computers at the time. I had a blast with Be.
Terry Davis, a very interesting man with a very tragic story.
His videos were very interesting. It was sad watching him go on his racist rants yet you knew there was some work of genius going on inside his schizophrenia diseased head when he would go into details about his OS. The fact that he wrote his own version of C to write the OS shows you had to be insane.
@@Being_Joe said: "...he wrote his own version of C to write the OS..."
O_O
Damn.
@@TeagueChrystie Yes, he called it HolyC, a variant of C written in C/C++ is my understanding. I think he also wrote the compile from scratch in assembly.
Yes the tragic run in with the illuminating high melanin intelligence agencies individuals.
@@jonathanrealman8415 Men in Black?
Great video, I don't think most people even know there are any other Operating Systems besides the main 3. Thanks for all the hard work with this video.
And there is good reason behind that, they are absolutely pointless for most users.
Haiku sure has come a long way. However, today, the interface feels like frozen in time. Sure, in 2000, the BeOS interface was bleeding edge. Today, Haiku is missing many features you would expect from a modern interface. For instance, its application menu feels pretty dated. One flat listing of programmes, extending the edge of the screen, no integration of online services, such as Nextcloud, no building calendar, contacts, an extremely basic mail client.
I'd love to use Haiku for real, but it is just missing too much that I rely on (the most important piece being 1. a decent web browser and 2 a nextcloud client or usable webdav integration.
I don’t mind the retro feel of Haiku, in fact I find it’s OS9 look and more importantly, speed, a feature.
However, a modern browser is a huge oversight. Most of the things you state could be covered by a browser.
The other huge oversight in 2021 with Haiku is lack of multiple monitor support. That’s just an extremely common workflow now.
@@pixelotix lets start with mainstream apps, or the lack of. And games, which even BeOS BeAllLike: who games. A lot of people actually.
@@gorkskoal9315 There's no app more mainstream than a webkit browser.
My side project (which is an OS) is coming out on the 20th (well Beta 2 which would be the first usable and installable version). Just a shameless plug, but hey it's relevant haha. Got this video as a notification so clearly RUclips knows I'm into this haha
I'd never have guessed this guy was a radio presenter after listening to his voice...Born for local radio! Poptastic!
he should go on the Fun Radio station in paris ! hahahahahahahaha
Radio Norwich
You should mention which programming languages and compilers are available on each of these operating systems. An O/S depends on applications to survive.
I looooovvvveeeddd my Amiga 500! First computer I ever bought. Sold it for 4 times what I paid for it.
My first computer was a CPC 464.
I still own an Amiga 1200.
😲wooaa
Very nice, reminds me of earlier days of electronic data processing.
1993 called
It wants their OSes back.
Алекса Младић, I’m sorry Windows but 1993 wants their os back
@No Name no eye candy = minimalist.
@@tripolitan ya was wondering that too lol
1993...the year I was born. This video was awkward to watch for me o.o
I am a software developer, never written an OS.
...maybe i should. o.o'
Oh, operating systems? Well, maybe some of my FORTH items are just languages on top of other operating systems, but at least two or three boot directly. One of them came as a Rockwell version of 6502 chip. I think the chip was labeled "RF6511" or "RCF6511". I still have that baby somewhere.
Then another one booted directly on a Motorola VME development station. I still have that as well.
Of course, none of the ones were GUI, that may now disqualify most anything text based. Other FORTH releases (anybody remember Laxen and Perry) ran on MS DOS -- up to 6.22 in my case and depended on the DOS for disk file access and so on.
Then there were the BASIC systems on TRS-80 (on which I also had a direct boot FORTH), as well as the Hewlett Packard ROM BASIC which the 87 computer booted directly. And yes, I also still have somewhere a couple of DR-DOS versions ready to boot.
Haiku is great! illumos-based operating systems like OpenIndiana are also fantastic. Redox is a newer OS, but it’s developing fast and has brilliant devs.
My ears perked up when you said "Minicks" (Minix) :P Great video, Dan!
Shame you left out the BSDs.
He mentioned MacOS ... :)
@@dpjb78 That's not BSD. Darwin has a BSD compatibility layer, but it's certainly not a BSD. That's like saying Linux is a Unix (it's not)
@@Andrath Yes I trolled for the fun :) Sorry ! :)
Yeah, that was my first thought "Where is FreeBSD, or any of the other variants?".
With BSD mentioned in every other comment, it should probably be considered mainstream :P Also with OSX being a derivative, and I think some other domestic hardware running it, it might really be mainstream.
I'm glad that TempleOS was mentioned in the video, R.I.P Terry Davis
Well there goes the rest of my afternoon downloading and trying out some of these😉
Well he missed the "big" ones-BDS, chromiumOS, and technically Android x86, all of which are more popular then anything on this video, not that any of these are really common os's
Virtualization makes it easy to try a lot of these without a lot of pain.
@@jaykoerner chromium and Android x86 are both linux based so he only really missed bsd based operating systems
@@dantetehderp4896 no, they just use the Linux kernel(the Linux kernel mis developed separately from the rest), the rest of the is entirely different, and if your gonna say that's a problem then you forget some of the ones he showed also use the Linux kernel, so your point?
@@jaykoerner chromiumOS is a Linux dist as well as Android.
ArcaOS is so strange and fascinating. I wish it were possible to open source it, but it's amazing that the project is still going.
Since Microsoft still owns part of the source code, I have a feeling it won't happen.
There is OSFree but it doesn't seem to have !any working on it.
I was excited expecting you to mention Hurd, and you missed it :(
Debian GNU/Hurd is a thing, it exists, works, there are demos of it and lectures about on it on RUclips too.
0:27 Haiku OS - seemed on video very similar to possibilities to QNX-mini, awesome
but, all OS's so much gigabytes for just simple functions which can 16k to 2 mb do on same ram dimensions.
Pixels, which new robots and high nano tech try to supply the huge industrial chain , been better before with much higher unlimited resolutions with so much simpler less code, fit on few bytes.
What a world all became... losing everything.
Simple RTOS worked very well even on IC (today bios) on Voyagers too. Who lied the world during millions years?
Haiku has been almost dead (or eternally beta) since 15+ years; BeOS in its day was really a GREAT option to windows and macos; I've ran it in an 8500 PowerPC and the stability and multimedia performance was far superior to both oses, and the colorful GUI was refreshing and intuitive keeping great icons macos-style; I enjoy your Retrohour podcast very much too, greetings from South America Dan!
I've run* it
My genius mentor in the 80s wrote his own windows-like OS... wish I had kept a copy now...
RIP King Terry. The greatest programmer that has ever lived.
I thought he was just channeling for GOD, so he could have called it the C-BIBLE or something similar.
Davis remained lucid when discussing computer-related subjects, his communication skills were significantly affected by his schizophrenia. He was controversial for his regular use of racial epithets, which he explained was his way of combating actors of psychological warfare. During his final months, he struggled with periods of homelessness and incarceration. In 2018, he was struck by a train and died at the age of 48. Investigators could not determine whether his death was suicide or accidental.
I think there is a case to resurrect the IBM AS400 model of bespoke hardware and OS as a veritically integrated and tightly controlled platform.
The rationale would be that the system would be difficult to exploit due to the inability of bad actor to get the platform to look for vulnerabilities. That would make it more secure against exploit.
Such a system could be used for a web-facing portal server that could act as a buffer for more common hardware and OS systems serving the back-end.
Personally, I think the lack diversity for world-facing hardware and software is the cause of the major exploits against commercial and government systems that make most of data theft possible.
It was once held that cloud computing would be more secure. However, there have already been significant breeches and there is a growing recognition that the vector of exploit is the lack of diversity of hardware and software.
There may be a big opportunity to provide such highly vertical systems.
Thoughts?
I stay with my alltime favourite: ms dos 6.22 ! The essential files fit on one 1.44 mb diskette and it runs all my most loved games. ,👍😀