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How many operating systems have you used (comment with your favorite)

Displaying poll results.
0-3
  3% 7 votes
4-7
  26% 58 votes
8-11
  21% 46 votes
12-15
  13% 29 votes
16-19
  5% 13 votes
20 or more
  27% 60 votes
I don't need no stinkin' OS
  2% 6 votes
219 total votes.
[ Voting Booth | Other Polls | Back Home ]
  • Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks.
  • Feel free to suggest poll ideas if you're feeling creative. I'd strongly suggest reading the past polls first.
  • This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by acid andy on Monday February 05 2018, @07:36PM (16 children)

    by acid andy (1683) on Monday February 05 2018, @07:36PM (#633397) Homepage Journal

    Are we talking only on a regularly used home or work machine here or do ATMs, ticket machines and that game console you tried once at a friends house all count? Same question for arcade machines? What about calculators? What about when you call an automated telephone service? Are we only making the distinction on the OS family or would, for example, Windows 95 and Windows NT count as two operating systems? Presumably different Linux distros would count as different OSes too? So many questions! I just about lost count, even going by OS family / primary product name.

    --
    If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by DECbot on Monday February 05 2018, @08:16PM (9 children)

      by DECbot (832) on Monday February 05 2018, @08:16PM (#633408) Journal

      And to add, I assume different distros are counted as different OSes (Debian vs Arch vs Slackware vs ....), so then do we then also count release versions (Ubuntu 12.04LTS vs Ubuntu 16.04 vs ...) like we would for Windows (95 vs 98 vs XP vs 7 vs ...)?

      --
      cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
      • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2018, @09:32PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2018, @09:32PM (#633456)

        release versions?! But I'm on Gentoo!

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @10:00PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @10:00PM (#634122)

        so then do we then also count release versions (Ubuntu 12.04LTS vs Ubuntu 16.04 vs ...) like we would for Windows (95 vs 98 vs XP vs 7 vs ...)?

        What about DOSes from before the GUI became common?

        TRS-DOS don't remember what version(s)
        Apple DOS 3.2, 3.3, ProDOS 8, ProDOS 16, GS/OS multiple versions, Beagle Bros ProntoDOS
        CP/M don't remember version(s)
        MS-DOS 3.3, 4.x, 5.x, 6.x
        DR-DOS 5.x, 6.x, 7.x
        PC-DOS 3.3, grud-knows-which other versions
        FreeDOS 0.x, 1.x

        And that's before considering the BSDs, the many Linux distros and releases of each, Mac OS versions and the various flavors of Windows, Android versions, iOS versions, etc.

        • (Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Thursday February 08 2018, @02:36AM (1 child)

          by Appalbarry (66) on Thursday February 08 2018, @02:36AM (#634641) Journal

          Hey! Where's my Commodore 64 [wikipedia.org] you insensitive clod!

          • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday February 21 2018, @07:06PM

            by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Wednesday February 21 2018, @07:06PM (#641325) Journal

            C-64. Poser! Real computer users were on the CBM or PET! (Actually it was 4016s and 4032s I used at school when I couldn't get time on the TRS-80 Model IIIs. Until my folks gave me an incredible present of a Model III of my own.)

            --
            This sig for rent.
      • (Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Saturday February 10 2018, @07:17PM (3 children)

        by Dr Spin (5239) on Saturday February 10 2018, @07:17PM (#636106)

        No.

        Count all Linux versions as one thing (Although, obviously Yggdrasil ought to count on its own). And all Windows versions is one (But DOS is a separate thing). DRDos and Gem are different - get the idea.

        Do I count real BSD from Berkeley with and without my hacks as two different things?

        If I count the modern *BSDs as 3 different things, then I get to 40, and I am sure I forgot some. What about USCD Pascal? (Its behind you! - Oh no it isn't) And that Fortran only environment on CDC6600s?

        --
        Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
        • (Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Tuesday February 13 2018, @10:13AM (2 children)

          by FakeBeldin (3360) on Tuesday February 13 2018, @10:13AM (#637058) Journal

          That's not really fair. You can't lump Windows'95 in with Windows 8 - they are significantly different beasts in all aspects that anyone encounters.
          Different suggestion: count every version that you'd consider separate as a different OS.
          Sure, it's somewhat arbitrary, but it beats lumping everything from WfW3.11 to Win10 into one category.

          Moreover, as to embedded systems (e.g. microwave, car) or other OS's where you don't really know what the OS is (e.g. NES, SNES, ...): don't count 'em.

          For me, this leads to the following list:
          - ZX Spectrum Basic
          - C64 basic
          - Dos 3.0, 3.1, 3.13, 5.0, 6.0
          - Windows for Workgroups 3.11
          - Windows 95, 98, 2000, ME, NT, Vista, 8
          - Ubuntu LTS: 6.06, 8.04, 12.04, 16.04
          - Ubuntu 7 (i think)
          - Slackware
          - FreeBSD

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @05:09AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @05:09AM (#637467)

            That's not really fair. You can't lump Windows'95 in with Windows 8

            I beg to differ. Once set up, there's not THAT much difference between 95 and 7 (I haven't really used Vista much, but when I did, nothing really surprised me. Ten... ten may make me change my mind, tho - I've SEEN some things in Ten, man...)

            Turning off all the thrice-damned "dynamic menu" garbage helps a lot (where am I today? Am I overrr here? NOPE! I'm over here! Can't catch me!), and the Windows-style shortcut keys haven't changed insofar as the really common ones. I can still pop open an Explorer window from anywhere with windowskey+E and then just drill down to the program executable's location.

            Under the hood, yes, there's a lot of changes from 95 to 8 - most of them quite good. From the usability and UI perspective, tho, with a little bit of tweaking using the very options provided within Windows itself, you can maintain a mostly-consistent look all the way from 95 to 8. My Wintendo's desktop and Start menu on 7 looks almost identical to 95, as does the Control Panel and Explorer layout.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 18 2018, @01:49PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 18 2018, @01:49PM (#639689)

            C64? XZ81? Many would debate it wasn't technically an OS on there.

            Soooo one needs to define what an OS is as a baseline, and at what point does a derivative count as a unique entity. ( like going from 98 to 98SE should not count as 2 )

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2018, @08:49PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2018, @08:49PM (#636823)

        I went much more conservative:

        All Windows Oses, I counted as one.
        All Linux distros, I counted as one.
        All pre-Mac OS Xes, I counted as one.
        All Mac OS Xes, I counted as one.
        Each separate BSD, I counted individually. But each of the "desktop friendly" BSDs were all considered FreeBSD, so not counted again.
        Old SunOS and Solaris were two OSes.
        All Androids, Windows Mobiles, and IPhones/IPods were counted one each.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2018, @10:44PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2018, @10:44PM (#633498)

      My interpretation of this question implies "with full privileges".

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:31PM (4 children)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:31PM (#634106)

      I'd propose an interpretation of "did you act as a systems administrator or software dev on that OS" as the cutoff.

      Side question, bare metal or is retrocomputing simulation OK?

      I know enough OS/8 (the PDP-8 OS, not mac), MVS/360, and TOPS-10 to be dangerous, but I'll never run them on bare metal (probably).

      Let me just throw it out there that TOPS-10 is a cool OS. Long before apple tried to define itself as the friendly computer, TOPS-10 was actually friendly. MVS/360 is technologically impressive but no one would ever define it as friendly, its more of a KafkaOS. OS/8 was written in the 70s for 60s/70s minicomputers and is what 80s first wave home computers SHOULD have had instead of CP/M msdos and TRSDOS. Imagine the progress lost in IT/CS because of 80s home computers. Imagine the progress of a world of $100 PDP-8s running OS/8 instead of $100 commie 64s barely able to run MS basic.

      • (Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday February 07 2018, @06:59AM (2 children)

        by dry (223) on Wednesday February 07 2018, @06:59AM (#634323) Journal

        I'd think using it as your primary OS at least some of the time. I have an install of Minix that I installed out of curiosity and played with a bit. I didn't count it. I'm posting from an obscure semi-dead OS with a year old browser, which I counted.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 18 2018, @01:53PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 18 2018, @01:53PM (#639691)

          The joke is on you. You have more than one install of minix ( assuming you have a recent intel board.. )

          • (Score: 2) by dry on Sunday February 18 2018, @07:32PM

            by dry (223) on Sunday February 18 2018, @07:32PM (#639783) Journal

            Luckily my CPU is probably too old to include Minix.

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @09:00AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @09:00AM (#635453)

        I'd propose an interpretation of "did you act as a systems administrator or software dev on that OS" as the cutoff.

        According to that criterion probably the vast majority of computer users have used no operating system at all. The OS came preinstalled on the computer, and they didn't change anything until they dumped the computer for the next model.

  • (Score: 2) by captain_nifty on Monday February 05 2018, @08:31PM (6 children)

    by captain_nifty (4252) on Monday February 05 2018, @08:31PM (#633411)

    Hmm first is probably Commodore BASIC
    followed by DOS, I can't remember specific version numbers, but at least 2
    Then the many versions of Windows
    3.1, 95, 98, NT 4, NT 5, 2000/ME, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, I have so far managed to avoid 10, but it will probably eventually roll out to my work PC.
    UNIX as well as various versions of Linux; Redhat, Slackware, Ubuntu, Mint, Chrome OS.
    A few others, BeOS, FreeBSD.

    Oh and a few MacOS versions starting around system 6 on.

    Many of these were at work/school and were used only minimally, but many of them were installed (usually by me) on my own machines.

    Hmm I voted 16-19 but this looks like more, but it depends on how you count version/revision.

    If you count mobile and other devices, I guess you could also add versions of iOS, android, TI calculator OS, and too many others to count.

    The funny thing is I don't even really think of myself as a computer expert, I just dabble a little.

    • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday February 05 2018, @09:35PM

      by Gaaark (41) on Monday February 05 2018, @09:35PM (#633461) Journal

      Yeah, it's hard to vote ( I voted 20 or more) given a move from red hat 5.2 to redhat 6 could be considered 2 different OS.....

      Let's say lots and lots, no matter what you consider an OS!?!

      --
      --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Monday February 05 2018, @10:51PM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday February 05 2018, @10:51PM (#633506) Homepage
      Whatever was on th ZX81, then Spectrum.
      Then TOS on Atarti ST
      Then CPM
      Then DOS something early, and VMS.
      Then some very early MacOS, and SunOS
      Then Xenix, DOSes 3, 4, 5, and 6.
      Then Windows 3.0, 3.1, 3.11 for workgroups.
      Then Linux something brutally raw that I didn't install myself, and Solaris
      Then Win NT 3.5, and HP-UX
      Then WIn 95 and Win NT 4.0
      Then another later MacOS,
      Then Linux Slackware, Redhat, and Suse
      Then Linux debian 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
      During which OSX
      Then whatever Moto had on their phones, S40 and Symbian
      Then Maemo and Harmattan
      Then Gentoo,
      Then Devuan.

      If there's a straight and simple upgrade path between those, I'll not count them as different (So I count 2 windows, 2 Macs, 5 desktop/server linuxes), so I think that's about 20+, but 5 were phone OSes and shouldn't count were it not for 2 of which I use as a computer (n900 and n950), so counting them.

      Call it 18?
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday February 08 2018, @02:45AM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday February 08 2018, @02:45AM (#634645)

      Same here, if we're including versions, then I've done about 8 Ubuntus alone... Does Debian count different from Ubuntu? How about Gentoo? Raspbian? Slackware, etc.

      Then there's OS-X in half a dozen cats and national parks, several iOS, uncounted flavors of Android.

      Then if we're going back in time, we've got the Windows family: 3.1, 95-98-98SE-ME, NT, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10... DOS, DrDOS, CPM, Atari BASIC, Commodore, Tandy, VAX, Gould, and I've probably forgotten more than I've included.

      Favorite? Whatever works and doesn't prompt me to update it.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 2) by Sourcery42 on Thursday February 15 2018, @05:51PM (1 child)

      by Sourcery42 (6400) on Thursday February 15 2018, @05:51PM (#638328)

      I miss BeOS. It was super fast on the hardware of the day, simple, and had a nice interface. I never actually had a BeBox, but I missed around with the Developer's Edition or something like that shortly after Be Inc ceased to be. Nostalgia drives me to test drive Haiku on occasion, but it just isn't the same.

      • (Score: 2) by SDRefugee on Monday February 19 2018, @03:37AM

        by SDRefugee (4477) on Monday February 19 2018, @03:37AM (#639945)

        If you liked BeOS, then you should check out HaikuOS.. (https://www.haiku-os.org/). It is pretty much BeOS and though its still alpha, its pretty stable, and runs BeOS software.. Theres a lot of ports of Linux programs over to it... I run it frequently in Virtualbox... Very Cool!!!

        --
        America should be proud of Edward Snowden, the hero, whether they know it or not..
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @03:15PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @03:15PM (#640661)

      Thanks for reminding me about the C=64...

      I'm grouping a lot of these together, as I consider some of them too close to being different versions of the same OS.

      I'm also not counting OSes that I only touched a few times on other people's computers (Commodore PET, WinME, Mac System 7(?))

      So, my list would be:

      Commodore 64

      Vax/VMS (used during my university days to chat and send email over this thing called the "internet")

      MS DOS

      MS Windows 3.0/3.1 and 3.11 for Workgroups

      MS Windows 95/98/ME

      Windows NT 3.51/ 4.0/2000

      Windows XP

      Windows 7

      Windows 8/8.1 (this probably should be grouped either with 7, or with 10?)

      Windows 10

      MacOS X

      GNU/Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Slackware, etc)

      BSD (FreeBSD)

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by requerdanos on Monday February 05 2018, @09:55PM (11 children)

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 05 2018, @09:55PM (#633476) Journal

    Off the top of my head, I recall using, installing, and/or getting work or play done with these operating systems:

    • Something at Eastern Carolina University that was timesharing and had terminals (to play console/text games, early 80s)
    • TRS-DOS (TRS-80 Model I/III, early 80s)
    • Disk Extended Color Basic (TRS-80 Color Computer's DOS, early 80s)
    • VMS (Vax, early 80s)
    • CP/M (DEC Rainbow, early 80s)
    • Apple's DOS for the "II+", "][e" and "//c" (they were hipster-annoying even then, early 80s)
    • Something at the University of South Carolina that used punch cards. (For a Pascal class, mid-80s)
    • Unix System III: On Arbornet.m-net.org back when it was just called m-net (mid-80s)
    • OS/9 (TRS-80 Color Computer's unixlike OS)
    • System+Finder (original 1984 Macintosh OS)
    • DOS (Late 80s)
    • Windows 3.0 (on a 286 with LIM expanded memory)
    • Windows 3.1/3.11
    • Windows 95, 97 (beta), 98, ME
    • Windows NT 3.1, NT4, 2K, XP, Vista, 7~, 8
    • Windows 10 preview (for less than a day)
    • Various early slackware linuces
    • Various early Red Hat (Not RHEL) (I remember they were testing i18n and one of the install languages was "Redneck." Red Hat is in my home state of North Carolina. Very funny guys.)
    • Mandrake (not Mandriva)
    • PalmOS (I actually used the handwriting recognition to take notes and help my memory. Otherwise the Palm devices for me were e-readers.)
    • Windows CE
    • Open Solaris
    • FreeBSD~
    • Reactos~
    • Debian GNU/Hurd~
    • Debian potato, woody, sarge, etch, lenny, squeeze, wheezy, jessie~*, stretch~*, buster/sid~*
    • Ubuntu (various early)
    • Mint
    • Devuan~*
    • OSX
    • Android~*

    So that's at least a few dozen. ~ Means that I still have it installed and usable on a real or virtual machine. * means I use it on a day to day basis for a workstation or server (or phone/tablet) OS.

    Reading over this, it looks like I've been spending my life preparing for this one sidebar survey. And this is what I *remember*. No telling what all I've forgotten.

    Favorite: Debian. Thanks guys, Debian is excellent.

    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 05 2018, @10:50PM (3 children)

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday February 05 2018, @10:50PM (#633505) Homepage Journal

      Yup, I'm to the point that I could probably take the same choices for "How many OSes have you used this week?" and be safe hitting 20+ without thinking about it.

      Right off hand I can think of thirteen that are installed on something in my house right now. Add three more for the SN servers and one for The Roomie's truck and I really don't have to get out much at all to break twenty for the week.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2018, @10:59PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2018, @10:59PM (#633513)

        I really don't have to get out much at all

        Of course you don't have to get out much when you're satisfied to stick your dick in the robotic vacuum cleaner. Right, Uzzard?

    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday February 05 2018, @10:55PM (2 children)

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday February 05 2018, @10:55PM (#633508) Homepage
      Dang, I'd forgotten Palm (had a V). And Psion's EPIC. And a few BSD variants. And of course, I used some mainframe OS at one school, and a TRS/80 at another, and BBCs at another. Yeah, even folding versions into 1, 20 is easy.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday February 27 2018, @01:12PM (1 child)

        by TheRaven (270) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @01:12PM (#644599) Journal

        And Psion's EPIC.

        I note that hardly anyone has answered the 'favourite' part of the question, but that one (or, rather, EPOC, it's correct name) is mine - specifically EPOC16 (a.k.a. SIBO). It ran on a 4MHz 16-bit CPU with 256KB of RAM, ran a useable (though not WYSIWYG) word processor, a spreadsheet that's still probably my favourite (I actually still use it in a Psion emulator in DOSBox sometimes, because it's the only one I've used where keyboard navigation was easy), and came with a reasonable programming language (with support for structured programming). In spite of the tiny amount of RAM, it was a multitasking environment and still had RAM left over to use a RAM drive as the machine's primary storage (though I got a 128KB Flash SSD for mine as well - I remember not being able to fit the H2G2 text adventure on it).

        I'm almost tempted to buy a 3a or 3c now that they're so cheap on eBay, but for the fact that even emulating an x86, DOSBox would probably run the emulator fast on my cheap mobile phone than the real hardware would run. And, in the emulator, you can easily set the screen resolution to 640x480 (and the built-in apps scale to that resolution, so you can see a lot more without scrolling).

        --
        sudo mod me up
        • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday February 28 2018, @08:02AM

          by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Wednesday February 28 2018, @08:02AM (#645027) Homepage
          Yeah, that's the one. I'm *desperate* for a simple spreadsheet on this linux machine, and the Psion one would do perfectly. The only shit that seems available seems (a) dependent on gigabytes of modern gui libraries, or part of an even bigger "suite", that I don't want to install; or (b) unsupported, and so old it won't even build on a C99 compiler.
          --
          Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 2) by black6host on Tuesday February 06 2018, @06:50PM (2 children)

      by black6host (3827) on Tuesday February 06 2018, @06:50PM (#634019) Journal

      By the way OS-9 is written with a dash instead of a slash. But the real reason I'm commenting is OS-9 is definitely one of my most favorite operating systems. It has a much larger range of machines it runs on than the Tandy CoCo. It's still in use today in embedded systems, etc. Multitasking, real-time, multi-user, reentrant code, etc. Quite a decent OS. I learned a lot playing with it.

      By the way, for those that don't know, this isn't the mac os 9. This was designed back in the 80's and ran on 6809 chips. And still runs today.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by requerdanos on Tuesday February 06 2018, @08:58PM (1 child)

        by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 06 2018, @08:58PM (#634091) Journal

        OS-9

        Right you are. Sorry about the MacSlash.

        The command "DOS" was added to Disk Extended Color Basic specifically to be able to boot OS-9.

        • (Score: 2) by black6host on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:29PM

          by black6host (3827) on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:29PM (#634104) Journal

          And boy was I glad it was! :) Have a good day fellow old-timer!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @04:18PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @04:18PM (#643472)

      Yup, same here. I reached 20 so quickly I stopped counting. Most of those I have touched on my day job too, I didn't even start to include all those custom Linux derivatives on media players or NAS devices that I've modded, or the microkernels I've toyed with.

      I did group different Linux distro's from the same vendor together (so Red Hat, Fedora and RHEL == 1; SuSE, SLES, SLED and OES == 1), and counted Microsoft OSes as five different families: Dos (non-graphical), Windows 3.x (16-bit x86), Windows 9x (32-bit x86), Windows NT (entire kernel lineage), and Windows CE (handheld devices).

      Here's some that I haven't seen mentioned yet:
      - Apple iOS
      - Cisco IOS
      - Juniper JunOS
      - VMWare
      - Novell Netware
      - HP-UX
      - IBM AIX
      - Sun Solaris
      - Illumos
      - OS/400 (IBM iSeries)

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2018, @10:19PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2018, @10:19PM (#633486)

    Apple DOS; ProDOS 8; ProDOS 16; GS/OS; MS-DOS; DR-DOS; FreeDOS; Windows 3.1; Windows NT; Windows 2000; Windows 95; Windows XP; Windows Vista, 7, 8, 10; ReactOS; Macintosh System 6, 7, 8, 9; Mac OSX; AIX; SunOS; FreeBSD; NetBSD; OpenBSD; GNU Hurd; Linux; Android

    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday February 05 2018, @10:58PM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday February 05 2018, @10:58PM (#633511) Homepage
      Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPRvc2UMeMI
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:23PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:23PM (#644862)

      WinME FTW!

  • (Score: 2) by Apparition on Tuesday February 06 2018, @12:17AM

    by Apparition (6835) on Tuesday February 06 2018, @12:17AM (#633555) Journal
    • Commodore Basic
    • MS-DOS 4.x/5.x/6.x
    • Windows 3.11
    • Windows 95/98/98 SE
    • Windows NT 4/Windows 2000/Windows XP
    • Debian Linux Testing in the early 2000s
    • Mandrake/Mandriva Linux
    • Windows Vista/7/8.1
      • So... Eight?

  • (Score: 2) by mendax on Tuesday February 06 2018, @01:20AM (8 children)

    by mendax (2840) on Tuesday February 06 2018, @01:20AM (#633569)

    I grouped my list into OS families, these being OSes that I used regularly at one time or the other. For example, despite the similarity of names, Windows 3.1 (is it really an OS?) is essentially a different OS from Windows 95, which is completely different from Windows NT and its successors up to the present. These are (in no particular order):

    DEC RSTS/E
    Control Data NOS
    PrimeOS
    TRS-80 DOS
    Apple DOS
    Atari DOS
    CP/M-86
    MS-DOS
    Windows 2.0/3.1
    Windows 95
    Windows NT 4/2000/XP/7/810
    VMS
    DEC Ultrix
    DEC Unix
    IBM AIX
    HP-UX
    SunOS
    Solaris
    AT&T Unix System V
    Linux (SLS/Slackware/SUSE/Ubuntu)
    MacOS (from the original System/Finder to version 9)
    MacOS X
    FreeBSD
    Android
    iOS

    I now feel very old.

    --
    It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday February 06 2018, @05:41AM (2 children)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 06 2018, @05:41AM (#633650) Journal

      I now feel very old.

      Get excited by something not tried yet - not quite OS-es, but:
      - some microcontroller developer boards are quite cheap - see Arduino
      - even FPGA-s aren't that expensive

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday February 08 2018, @02:47AM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday February 08 2018, @02:47AM (#634646)

        Oooh, reminded me: NIOS cores... not really an OS, but certainly a toolchain and a half to get them to do anything.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @04:22PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @04:22PM (#643476)

        Ooh, good call... there's also MicroPython [micropython.org] (bare-metal Python implementation), that counts as an OS too, right?

    • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Tuesday February 06 2018, @07:53PM (3 children)

      by zocalo (302) on Tuesday February 06 2018, @07:53PM (#634061)
      Lots of overlap with my list there. Good poll; my initial guess was likely around a dozen, but when I started to think about phones and other hardware specific options from the early days of micros it went up pretty fast and I got over 20 without the need to count different flavours of Linux, BSD, etc. as different versions; it'd almost certainly be over 50 if I did that. Some other options from my list:

      AIX
      AmigaOS
      BeOS
      DR-DOS
      DyNIX
      ICL VME
      IRIX
      NeXT
      Novell
      OS/2
      OS/360, OS/390
      PalmOS
      RiscOS (Acorn)
      SCO Unix
      TOPS-20
      Xenix

      And that's *still* only scratching the surface of the total number of possibilities...
      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
      • (Score: 2) by mendax on Wednesday February 07 2018, @03:29AM

        by mendax (2840) on Wednesday February 07 2018, @03:29AM (#634273)

        I forgot to mention BeOS. I still have an installation CD and boot disk in my garage somewhere. It was a kick-ass OS for its time. It's unfortunate that Apple didn't buy Be, Inc. but they made the right decision in acquiring Next instead.

        --
        It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
      • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday February 09 2018, @11:03PM (1 child)

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Friday February 09 2018, @11:03PM (#635761) Homepage

        You're the only IRIX here, along with me. You'd think there would be more.

        Though compared to your lists and those of others here, mine is pretty pathetic. Also, no Solaris?

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by zocalo on Saturday February 10 2018, @10:46AM

          by zocalo (302) on Saturday February 10 2018, @10:46AM (#635964)
          I was only listing those I've used that were not on the list posted by parent. I've not used Solaris in anger for quite a while now (since before Oracle bought Sun), but used it extensively (as well as SunOS) back in the day for both ISP and manufacturing applications. Somewhat surprised that there are not more mentions of IRIX too - Silicon Graphics used to be *the* platform for high-end graphics work; I'd have thought there would have been at least some old timers here who had run rendering farms, etc.
          --
          UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    • (Score: 1) by brausch on Wednesday February 07 2018, @05:36AM

      by brausch (3519) on Wednesday February 07 2018, @05:36AM (#634307)

      My list is like yours, except I never used CP/M, Atari DOS, or Android (surprisingly). I can add Unicos (Cray's UNIX), Next OS, and Data General MV series. I also feel (am?) old. :-)

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @04:00AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @04:00AM (#633621)

    I only use a Gnu Hurd that boots directly into Gnu Emacs.

    • (Score: 4, Touché) by c0lo on Tuesday February 06 2018, @05:42AM (1 child)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 06 2018, @05:42AM (#633651) Journal

      Gnu Hurd doesn't count, emacs is the OS here.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday February 07 2018, @05:09PM

        by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 07 2018, @05:09PM (#634433) Journal

        Hurd doesn't count, emacs is the OS

        To be fair, emacs is the more polished, finished, complex, and usable of the two.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by shortscreen on Tuesday February 06 2018, @06:11AM (1 child)

    by shortscreen (2252) on Tuesday February 06 2018, @06:11AM (#633657) Journal

    I have used various versions of DOS, Windows, Mac, Linux, and '80s home computer OSs, mostly covered by other posters' lists, but I didn't see Amiga yet (I played with MorphOS a bit too). And how about MSX-DOS, Human68K, and whatever OS the TI calculators used?

    It's too bad that the Amiga didn't have memory protection from the beginning. It worked pretty well, in between crashes/gurus/reboots. Of course the 68000 had no MMU, and many 68K-based computer lines were born and died without ever getting a proper protected mode, preemptive multitasking OS. I guess the 68000 suffered from being "good enough." PCs started with the inferior 8086 and were able to move beyond its limitations. Imagine if the 8086 had 24-bit addressing (shift those segments left another four bits). Without having run out of address space so soon (640KB/1MB limit vs. hypothetical 16MB limit), how much longer would 16-bit DOS/Windows have hung on before finally being displaced by Windows NT?

    • (Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday February 07 2018, @07:27AM

      by dry (223) on Wednesday February 07 2018, @07:27AM (#634326) Journal

      Moving to NT as soon as the hardware supported it well would have happened if only for the memory protection, at least assuming the vendor put in close to equal support.

  • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday February 06 2018, @07:39PM

    by Freeman (732) on Tuesday February 06 2018, @07:39PM (#634058) Journal

    The OS I am currently using. Assuming, I'm not wishing death on the creator of said OS, because it's so useless. Then, it's just about anything else.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:43PM (6 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:43PM (#634113)

    How about strangest OS?

    An old version of minix on a 8086 XT. How are you doing memory and task protection? Oh I see, you aren't. None the less, it kinda worked. Ancient BSDs are one form of minimal unix, this was another, stranger form. If HP Lovecraft tried to write a unix on a 8086 ....

    Urbit. Author's sometimes seem cantankerous lets redefine stuff just to F with people. Yet, it mostly works most of the time.

    Every software developer's first interaction with a RTOS seems to involve a lot of "WTF". I have to do what, to make a LED provably reliably low latency high reliability blink? F it, lets just design a 555 timer into the hardware to blink the LED. I will admit RTOS are kinda cool once your brain finishes wrapping around the minimum required set of weirdness.

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday February 08 2018, @02:50AM (2 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday February 08 2018, @02:50AM (#634647)

      For weirdest we had Apollo workstations at school, I forget what they named their OS, but it was basically Sun Unix but with all the commands renamed... PITA, but they had sweeeet high res (like 1280x1024) 19" color monitors.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Friday February 09 2018, @01:12PM (1 child)

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 09 2018, @01:12PM (#635484)

        AEGIS and it was weird. Global root networked filesystem. Everything old is new again, eventually. The unix compatibility was skin deep.

        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday February 09 2018, @01:32PM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday February 09 2018, @01:32PM (#635490)

          Yep, that's the one - wouldn't work without a network card and the network was token ring... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain/OS#AEGIS [wikipedia.org]

          but the actual commands themselves were designed to be easier to remember and use than their sometimes cryptic Unix equivalents

          I call complete marketing BS on that line... they were renamed, equally if not more cryptic than their Unix equivalents, and no easier to remember - especially if you were simultaneously operating in MS-DOS, VAX and Unix elsewhere. The easiest to use aspect of the AEGIS commands was that, in practice, they worked almost identically to their Unix equivalents.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 2) by https on Saturday February 24 2018, @10:47PM (1 child)

      by https (5248) on Saturday February 24 2018, @10:47PM (#643205) Journal

      Linux on oldworld PowerPC Apples.

      One wag described it as a continuous IQ test. For example, dual boot mandatory, no live CDs possible, and you had to choose your partitioning scheme before reinstalling MacOS. And the nightmare of the X server not starting unless you set the color depth to 15 bits. And so on.

      At least the audio worked.

      --
      Offended and laughing about it.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @01:22AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @01:22AM (#644363)

        Dual-boot was not mandatory. Life was much easier with it, but definitely not mandatory. I ran NetBSD on my PPC ibook G4 until I got tired of fighting and returned to OSX.

    • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday February 27 2018, @01:16PM

      by TheRaven (270) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @01:16PM (#644602) Journal
      Intel RMX. I think it still exists: real-time operating system pushed by Intel, along with the PL/M language, which was the first low-level language that I learned.
      --
      sudo mod me up
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Tuesday February 06 2018, @10:34PM (6 children)

    by Snotnose (1623) on Tuesday February 06 2018, @10:34PM (#634145)

    Windows from 3.0 to 10 count as 1 OS, all Unix's count as 1. Thinking back I come up with 10-11. TRS-DOS, NEW-DOS, CP/M, RSX-11, VMS, Pyramid-OS, Windows, *nix, TRS-80 Basic, GEM, and a couple more in school (early 80s) I've forgotten the name of.

    --
    Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 07 2018, @02:30AM (5 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 07 2018, @02:30AM (#634259)

      DOS-based Windows and NT-based Windows are completely different operating systems. In fact there was an unreleased version of NT called Microsoft Neptune which was actually not named Windows. I have used Microsoft Neptune and it might have been nice if Microsoft had dropped the name Windows but brand recognition prevailed.

      • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 07 2018, @06:27AM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 07 2018, @06:27AM (#634320)

        > Microsoft Neptune

        Should've named it Microsoft Uranus. Then you could call tech support and say that Uranus is being an ass.

        • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 07 2018, @08:02AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 07 2018, @08:02AM (#634332)

          VMS = "Virtual Memory System"

          'W' == 'V'+1
          'N' == 'M'+1
          'T' == 'S'+1

          WNT = "Windows New Technology"

          NT = "New Technology"

          NepTune = 'N' +"ep"+ 'T' +"une"

          Ahahahaha I get it now. Dude pass the weed dude.

        • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday February 07 2018, @03:19PM (1 child)

          by acid andy (1683) on Wednesday February 07 2018, @03:19PM (#634406) Homepage Journal

          Yeah, hello? My planet is being a jenny.

          I mean, my celestial body is being a donkey.

          What? No, I mean, I'm being orbited by an equine.

          *CLICK*

          Hello? Please help me with my errant asinus satellite! Hello!?

          --
          If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 08 2018, @03:05AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 08 2018, @03:05AM (#634651)

            The sun finally calls his supermassive black mother?

      • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday February 08 2018, @02:36AM

        by Snotnose (1623) on Thursday February 08 2018, @02:36AM (#634640)

        That's why I broke out TRS-80 Basic and TRS-DOS. Never mind I spelled the OS that has made me successful *nux. Sigh.

        --
        Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
  • (Score: 1) by Slartibartfast on Wednesday February 07 2018, @03:17AM

    by Slartibartfast (5104) on Wednesday February 07 2018, @03:17AM (#634271)

    "It goes on forever, and oh my God, it's full of operating systems!"
    VMS
    OS/2
    CP/M
    Vic-20 & C=64 (I'll put them on the same line for argument's sake)
    AmigaDOS
    Unix in several of its myriad variants (SCO, VXWorks, SunOS, Solaris, DOMAIN, HP/UX, Mac/BSD*, blah, blah, blah)
    Unix-esque router/appliance OSen (e.g., IOS)
    Linux in all its myriad variants (Red Hat, Ubuntu, Slackware, Debian, etc., etc.)
    Netware (2.x and 3.x -- and if you think those are close to the same, well...no)
    DOS (and variants, such as FreeDOS and Dr. DOS)
    Winders (DOS-based)
    Winders (non-DOS based)
    Apple II
    Mac (pre-Unix)
    BeOS
    MVS
    AtariDOS
    Whatever the heck ran on the 6502-driven Commodore 1541 and 1571 floppy disk drives
    Various forms of embedded Hell (mostly on miscellaneous telecom switches and PBXes)
    PICK OS
    Emacs (This line's a joke. I think.)
    Whatever else it is I'm forgetting from, like, 1987. For example, does the fact that I ran BASIC on an Atari 2600 count? Probably not. Likewise, the fact that I've gotten console from various devices that the creators of which really rather wish I hadn't.

  • (Score: 2) by canopic jug on Wednesday February 07 2018, @08:59AM (1 child)

    by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 07 2018, @08:59AM (#634338) Journal

    I guess it depends on how you count an OS. I'm don't think that Linux distros really count as separate operating systems, even if there is increasing divergence over the years. It would be ridiculious to fluff up the count that way.

    • MTS (mainframe)
    • Apple DOS
    • CP/M
    • PC-DOS, MS-DOS
    • DR-DOS
    • MacOS
    • SunOS
    • Windows NT
    • Solaris
    • OS X
    • GNU/Linux
    • OpenBSD

    So I guess that's about 11, not counting ones that I've dabbled with like QNX, HaikuOS, and FreeBSD. Somehow I missed OS/2 completely. I had looked forward to it but after a short wait saw what M$ did to IBM because of it and knew to not expect anything.

    --
    Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 02 2018, @12:04AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 02 2018, @12:04AM (#646103)

      So your number is two then? Mac and all that other cruft?

  • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday February 07 2018, @12:24PM (5 children)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Wednesday February 07 2018, @12:24PM (#634377) Homepage Journal

    I mean, no one takes these polls too seriously, but I really don't know how to answer. Heck, I don't even know how to count. Windows 3.1, Win NT 4 and Win 10 are surely different operating systems, but what about Win7/Win10? If those count as different, then so must Xubuntu 16.04/16.10/etc.. In which case I may well be in the hundreds by now: Android since the beginning, Windows since the beginning, Linux since, maybe not the beginning but a long time, etc..

    Then there's the question of "used". Being just a pure user of a system, you generally have little contact with the OS. Back in IBM 360 days, I just submitted my jobs, and had no idea (and didn't care) what version of O/S was in use. What about the bank ATM? Maybe it really is still XP, but I actually have no idea.

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
    • (Score: 2) by canopic jug on Wednesday February 07 2018, @05:23PM (2 children)

      by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 07 2018, @05:23PM (#634440) Journal

      Heck, I don't even know how to count. [...] Then there's the question of "used".

      I used to ask people what the most widely used file system was, to get them to think a little. Mostly they'd try to foist some bullshit answer like VFAT or NTFS. However, I'd respond with either Google File System or ISO-9660. Back then all computers came with several CDs or DVDs, same for most commercial packages. The world was then full of computer CDs and DVDs, so that would be a case for ISO-9660. However, most people connected to the net use Google at least a few times per day, and that's a lot of people, so that was a case for GFS.

      --
      Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @09:08AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @09:08AM (#635454)

        But if you connect to Google, you don't use Google's file system. Google does, to provide you the service, but you don't.

        It's like saying I'm using the telephone if I go personally to an office, and then the officer makes a phone call in order to serve my request.

        • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday February 17 2018, @03:04PM

          by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 17 2018, @03:04PM (#639347) Journal

          But if you connect to Google, you don't use Google's file system. Google does

          Further, just because the world gets mailed an AOL CD which is using ISO 9660, does not mean that everyone in that world is using the CDs as intended. Maybe they use them for coasters (the original ones, under drinks on furniture), or make art out of them...

    • (Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Saturday February 10 2018, @05:54PM (1 child)

      by Hyperturtle (2824) on Saturday February 10 2018, @05:54PM (#636075)

      I'd say Vista and Win 7 are "the same" and that 8 and 10 are "the same". I think that because of how the stuff under the hood is lumped together or presented; like how 2000 and 2003 for server are similar, or 2000 and XP are similar. But 95 and 98 are like each other but not like NT. With that logic, 7 and 10 would be different to me as a result. I am sure some people with only MS experience would lump all of Linux under the same category; just changing the name or version number might not count to someone that has no idea what the differences are.

      But aside from that, I am also confused. There is used, there is actively used, and there is 'exposed to', 'sort of touched once' and 'locked off behind a session on a dumb terminal because I only accessed the program running on the OS and any of the OS gritty details themselves but knew it was on a mainframe or mini computer or x terminal or...'.

      I think for this poll, I'll stick with "devices I had user rights to install stuff onto" as a valid OS. If it was locked in a browser,telnet, ssh or terminal emulator, then that is a gray area -- many CLIs give you access to whats under the hood, yet other ones are no more the OS than dialing into compuserv.

      • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday February 17 2018, @03:29PM

        by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 17 2018, @03:29PM (#639353) Journal

        I'd say Vista and Win 7 are "the same" and that 8 and 10 are "the same". I think that because of how the stuff under the hood is lumped together or presented; like how 2000 and 2003 for server are similar, or 2000 and XP are similar.

        From my vantage point, XP, Vista, Win7, Win8, Win10, and Server 200x are all various presentations of Windows NT. Thus, same operating system, released with different defaults and added/refined features over time.

        There was windows 1 and 2 that had no memory management to speak of (relying on DOS for that), that were just programs running on top of DOS, and not operating systems in themselves at all, although DOS+Windows was an operating system (just not a very well-supported one).

        Then, there was windows 3.0 and windows 3.1x that had advanced memory management (EMS memory mapping and EMS memory mapping + 386-extended mode memory management, respectively) albeit 16-bit, that made them at least a different thing if not a different operating system, the difference being in the base internals, not so much in the presentation.

        Then Windows 95 through Windows ME, which, still being graphical things on top of DOS, were 32-bit foundations with preemptive multitasking, completely different from what came before, and DOS+Windows 9x/ME being again, arguably, a separate OS.

        And finally, Windows NT / 2000 / Server / XP / Vista / 7 / 8 / 8.1 / 10, an independent system that does not run "on top of" DOS or anything else, but that other things run on top of--arguably a completely different operating system, similar in appearance (initially, anyway) to those that came before: Windows NT 3.1 looked an awful lot like Windows 3.1x despite having almost nothing in common with same, and NT 4.0 looked almost identical to Windows 95.

        I am sure some people with only MS experience would lump all of Linux under the same category; just changing the name or version number might not count to someone that has no idea what the differences are.

        Even the *nix people might have trouble with this one, I guess. Again from my vantage point, since Linux proper isn't so much an operating system as it is a kernel that you make operating systems out of, there have been many operating systems made out of Linux, from Slackware to Debian to Android.

        I would count distinct (Gnu/) Linux distributions as distinct-but-similar-operating systems based on the word "system" being "one thing from many parts" and the parts being different (packages designed for the Red Hat ecosystem, Debian, and Ubuntu, are frequently three different packages because of differences in the underlying OSes involved).

        But the lines here are more fuzzy, sometimes indistinct.

  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday February 07 2018, @08:45PM (2 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 07 2018, @08:45PM (#634560) Journal

    TRS-DOS (TRS-80 disk operating system)
    Vulcan (Harris minicomputer 1970's)
    CP/M (briefly)
    SOS (Apple /// for several years)
    UCSD p-System for years and years
    I could mention Corvus Concept, yes, really, but it hardly counts.
    MS-DOS 3.x to 6.x
    Lisa
    Mac OS (classic all versions 1.0 to 9.x)
    Windows (3.1 onward)
    Linux (SuSE 5.1 onward, Ubuntu 2006 onward, etc)

    Favorite:
    From 1982 to 1984 and beyond, UCSD p-System
    From 1984 to 1999 favorite was Mac OS classic.
    From 1999 on, Linux.

    Honorable mention: that Vulcan minicomputer was a passionate favorite when I was young, 18-21ish, because I had access to source code, and absolutely plumbed the depths of what could be done down in the bowels of the OS. But I quickly moved on to microcomputers when I graduated.

    I developed for UCSD p-System for years. Employer's product (same source code) ran on Apple II, Apple ///, Corvus Concept and IBM PC. The "write once run anywhere" naturally made me like Java many years later. On the IBM-PC we found this Canadian product Datalex Bubble that ran the entire p-System inside an MS-DOS wrapper, so PC users had no idea our app wasn't actual MS-DOS native.

    I developed new versions of employer's product for Mac OS, for years, until the late 1990's.

    Once I learned Linux I never looked back. Timing was convenient because Apple completely abandoned everyone's investment in expensive hardware that ran Mac OS classic. You had to get all new hardware to run OS X. Why bother when there was this new Linux thing.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday February 07 2018, @08:47PM (1 child)

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 07 2018, @08:47PM (#634562) Journal

      Oh, yeah, forgot about NeXT. I didn't develop for it. But we got one and used it a fair amount when we got an internet connection (not dialup).

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @05:30PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @05:30PM (#635592)

        I forgot about NeXT since I only used NeXTSTEP on HP PA-RISC workstations instead of NeXT branded hardware.

  • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday February 08 2018, @06:00PM

    by urza9814 (3954) on Thursday February 08 2018, @06:00PM (#635069) Journal

    Four that I know of...

    1) Many, many Linux distros (Currently running in my home: Antergos, Fedora, CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, Proxmox, OpenWRT, Raspbian, LineageOS, Cyanogenmod, Mint)
    2) A couple Unix variants...some college labs that I don't recall; brief installs of Solaris and OpenBSD; currently using a lot of AIX boxes at work; and my home firewall is pfSense which is based on a BSD.
    3) Various flavors of Windows (and a bit of MS DOS), from 3.1 to 7 (I've briefly touched 8 and 10, but never for more than a few minutes!)
    4) Apple...though I think the only Apple system I ever spent any significant amount of time on was a IIE, and that was just the elementary school labs. Mostly including this to take myself out of the 0-3 category, not sure if it should count ;) Occasionally I also have to support people on Macs, so I've touched OS X a few times, but I generally try to avoid that.

    Not counting each individual Linux distro because that's too easy, I'd be 20+ from that alone...And those aren't really separate OSes, just variants of the same kernel.

    Also not counting different releases of the same OS...might be a new version, but it's still the same OS. Particularly since I'm running a few rolling release, so any attempt to count those would be fuzzy at best.

    And not counting appliances because those OSes don't matter. Sure, I've done a lot of graphics calculator programming, and I've done some game console and digital camera hacking, and I'm sure all of those devices have operating systems...but I can't even tell you the name of it and it's pretty much inseparable from the hardware itself. It's hard to say I've "used" an OS when I don't actually know anything about it!

  • (Score: 1) by AlwaysNever on Saturday February 10 2018, @12:21PM (1 child)

    by AlwaysNever (5817) on Saturday February 10 2018, @12:21PM (#635977)

    CP/M 2.2
    CP/M Plus 3.0
    MS-DOS 5.0
    MS-DOS 6.22 + Windows 3.1
    Windows 95
    Windows 98
    Windows 2000
    Windows XP
    Windows 2003
    Windows 7
    Windows 2008 R2
    Windows 2012 R2
    Windows 10
    Slackware 3.0
    Mandrake
    Debian Potato
    Debian Sarge
    Debian Squeeze
    Ubuntu 14.04
    Ubuntu 16.04
    CentOS 5.11
    CentOS 6.9
    SCO OpenServer 5.0.7
    Solaris 8

    • (Score: 2) by t-3 on Saturday February 10 2018, @03:29PM

      by t-3 (4907) on Saturday February 10 2018, @03:29PM (#636020)

      The first time I used a computer was playing some kind of educational game on MSDOS before I could even read, so ik not counting that. But early on all windows - 95 ->98 -> ME -> XP. Then it was Mac OSX, and a lot of time playing with an older MacOS (9 I think but can't remember, might still have it though so I should check) box that my dad got when some school sold off all it's old computers. I got into Linux at some point, went from slackware -> debian -> gentoo. Abandoned OSX once I got too used to minimalistic tiling window managers to use screen wasting mouse centric crap anymore. Nowadays I run mostly crux, an OpenBSD box, and I do some routine maintenance on another friend's box which I put Ubuntu on because I got tired of dealing with the viruses and toolbars.
        Mobile, first non featurephone was windows CE, then windows phone 7, then Android, then windows phone 8, and soon I will be back to Android.
      Favorite non-mobile would be OpenBSD, if it had the hardware support of Linux I would use it everywhere, but crux is a nice alternative once I wrote enough Pkgfiles and scripts to get everything I wanted running.
      Favorite mobile would be a tie between wp7 and CE, but the Samsung featurephone I had before those was my favorite touch screen phone.

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 11 2018, @09:57AM (2 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday February 11 2018, @09:57AM (#636318) Journal

    Basically, SysV was Unix, before Sco or Berkeley got hold of it. I've used SVr4 and SVr5 - or, they've used me. Industrial embedded systems, which are locked down pretty tightly, to prevent really stupid situations from being created. Our systems have an odd flavor - they don't feel like any other Unix-like that I've ever meddled with. In all cases, SysV has been drastically customized for the machines on which it is installed. Strange stuff, really, but I'm sure that SysV survives outside the plastic moulding industry.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 11 2018, @10:00AM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday February 11 2018, @10:00AM (#636320) Journal
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 13 2018, @10:25PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 13 2018, @10:25PM (#637303)

      Huh. All the plastic molding machines I've used have had various flavors of windows on them, except for the very old Maplans that we used for testing prototypes, which I have no idea about , and could have been anything.

  • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday February 11 2018, @06:28PM (2 children)

    by hemocyanin (186) on Sunday February 11 2018, @06:28PM (#636405) Journal
    1. TRS-80 (whatever it was)
    2. Commodore 64 (whatever it was)
    3. MSDOS (many versions)
    4. DRDOS (a few versions)
    5. GeoWorks (does this count it being run on top of a *DOS)
    6. VMS (unknown version)
    7. Windows (many versions)
    8. MacOS (many versions)
    9. Linux (many versions)
    10. FreeDOS (one version)
    11. OSX (many versions)
    12. BSD (two versions)
    13. Arduino (does this count?)

    Anyway, I chose 8-11 by omitting questionable entries.

  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday February 12 2018, @10:41PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 12 2018, @10:41PM (#636858) Journal

    I entered 8-11, but to get to 8 I needed to count IBSYS as an operating system, and I'm not sure it really counts. OTOH, if TOS does, why not? The TOS machine could also only run one job at once.

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
  • (Score: 2) by dltaylor on Wednesday February 14 2018, @02:37AM (2 children)

    by dltaylor (4693) on Wednesday February 14 2018, @02:37AM (#637415)

    Not counting all variants, I have lived on and, in nearly all cases, coded for:

    UNIX Version 6,7
    UNIX SVR 3,4 (many platforms; I still like STREAMS)
    Original BSD (VAX and Amiga 68030)
    SunOS
    Solaris
    RSTS
    VMS (VAX)
    DEC Ultrix (MicroVAX)
    Apple DOS
    TRS-DOS
    UCSD P-system
    MS-DOS
    MS-DOS with various Windows shells (3.1, 3.1.1, 98SE)
    Windows NT 4
    Windows 2000,XP,7,Server 2003 (2000 was the best of these)
    CP/M-80 (learned to despise Microsoft on this)
    CP/M-86 (on 68k)
    AmigaDOS
    OSX
    DR-DOS
    Linux (desktop, server, embedded)
    Linux Android
    OpenBSD

    and coded for:

    PSOS
    VxWorks

    • (Score: 2) by dltaylor on Wednesday February 14 2018, @02:47AM

      by dltaylor (4693) on Wednesday February 14 2018, @02:47AM (#637422)

      AIX (360s, as a VM guest, and PS/2s)

    • (Score: 2) by dltaylor on Saturday February 17 2018, @08:40AM

      by dltaylor (4693) on Saturday February 17 2018, @08:40AM (#639268)

      OS-9 (on 6809)
      OS-9/68K

      I really should quit reading this poll before I have more comments than OS'.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @04:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @04:48PM (#638284)

    Very vague. To little info to deterimine what the poll creater considers a distinct OS. But making some assumptions:

    Some old Unix computer from my uncle to play games when I was 10yrs old.
    MS-DOS
    FreeDos
    Apple DOSt
    Windows 3.1
    Windows 95/98/Me
    Windows 2000
    Windows XP
    Windows Vista, 7
    Windows 10
    Windows SMB 2003
    Windows Server 2008
    Windows Server 2012
    Windows Server 2016
    Netware
    Red Hat Linux
    Fedora/Fedora Core Linux
    Knoppix
    Slackware
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux
    CentOS Linux
    Debian Linux
    Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu/Edubuntu/etc Linux
    Arch Linux
    Yellowdog Linux
    Mint Linux
    Lindows/Linspire Linux
    Corel Linux
    SuSE Linux
    SCO Linux
    Smoothwall
    PCLinuxOS
    Mandrake/Mandriva Linux
    Probably forgot a few other distros that I tried out.
    Mac OS, various versions up to 9
    Mac OSX
    Plan9
    ReactOS
    A few other random alternative OS's in a VM
    FreeBSD
    OpenBSD
    Cisco IOS
    Android, all stock versions from Cupcake to Oreo, Amazon Fire, Cyanogenmod, etc
    Palm/HP WebOS
    Whatever OS's my old feature phones ran
    Wii's OS
    Nintendo GB/GBC/GBA/DS OS
    Gamegear OS
    PS2's OS
    PS3's OS
    PSP's OS
    Xbox's OS
    Xbox 360's OS
    Xbox One's OS
    XMBC
    Visio TV's OS
    Mitsubishi TV's OS
    OS on TWC/Specturme/Uverse DVRs
    Other random device's OS's
    Do the TI-82/83/83+ have an OS?
    I could go on and on. When do I stop?
    Rockbox Firmware and whatever the default firmwares for my MP3 players were.

  • (Score: 2) by OrugTor on Friday February 16 2018, @04:22PM

    by OrugTor (5147) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 16 2018, @04:22PM (#638870)

    So, just a way to encourage people to list every OS variant they can think of and show off their knowledge of arcane OSes.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 16 2018, @07:08PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 16 2018, @07:08PM (#638952)

    and that was lumping all Linux variants as Linux, BSD variants as BSD, several different RTOSes as RTOS (I know, me bad...) etc.

    Hell, I even left out PRIMOS as
    a. I'd only used it in anger twice
    b. I still feel guilty about the day I was forced to pull the plug on an active Prime system similar to the one in this photo [pr1mehost.com] but a lot bigger with fun things like film recorders etc attached to it, can't recall the model number.

    The system was to be scrapped with zero notice to anyone, I didn't even know the thing existed 10 minutes before I was told to pull the plug on it. I ran into someone almost a decade later who was logged into the system from across the pond (system was in London, he was in New York) when I pulled the main circuit breakers, he always wondered WTF happened that day..bought him several pints as a belated apology, spent the rest of the night getting royally rat-arsed reminiscing about old systems.

    Favourite OS: TOPS-20

  • (Score: 2) by slap on Sunday February 18 2018, @06:08PM

    by slap (5764) on Sunday February 18 2018, @06:08PM (#639764)

    Coming up with this list made me think of things I haven't thought of in *years* - some are probably repressed memories.

    There are some that I've probably missed, but so far:

    IBM S/360 and Amdahl 470 running MTS (Michigan Terminal System)
    HP-1000/RTE
    CDC 6600/6700 running SCOPE
    Interdata running BOSS and SuperBOSS
    PDP/11 running RT-11 and TSX+
    Textronix 4054
    VAX/VMS
    IBM PC compatible running DOS
    Apollo workstation running DOMAIN/OS
    SGI Irix
    Cray running UNICOS
    MacOS
    Windows
    Linux (Slackware, Redhat, Madrake, Fedora, Gentoo, SUSE, Ubuntu, Mint)
    HP-UX
    Android
    IOS

  • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday February 21 2018, @07:23PM

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Wednesday February 21 2018, @07:23PM (#641339) Journal

    As either a user or a dev....

    A timeshare system at a university in the late-70s. (Actually doesn't count. My older sister logged in and let me play Star Trek on it.)
    A Model I TRS-80 (actually wasn't allowed to touch it but it was demonstrated for us).
    Commodore CBM and PET (4016 era).
    Model III TRS-80, TRSDOS, RAM, Cassette, and Floppy varieties. Several versions. We had a network with a networked 5MB hard drive system in High School.
    Model III TRS-80, LDOS and NEWDOS
    Dumb terminals of different flavors... yeah I'll count a boot-to-VT100 as an OS even though I shouldn't.
    Radio Shack Pocket Computer PC-2 and PC-4. With color "plotter".
    MS-DOS... can't remember the flavor numbers but I think in the 3's starting up through 6.
    Windows 3.1, (then later 95, 98, ME, XP, 7, 8, 10.)
    Mac SE (student operator at a Mac Lab in college. Used them, too. I also worked in the IBM lab and the central terminal room but never used the CMS/VMS/VAX terminals - just cut printer output for users). Got to see a Cray-1 up close too on a tour.
    Apple Newton OS
    Palm OS
    iOS
    Several flavors of Linux.
    Raspberry Pi - should count it as Linux but instead I'll say that it was its own beast.
    Do I get to count programmable HP Calcs that I wrote programs for? (15C, 28C, 48s, 50g, and I want a hardware Prime so bad I can taste it. My friend had a 41CX and I was so jealous because my 28C was stolen and it took awhile for me to get the 48s.)

    --
    This sig for rent.
  • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday February 21 2018, @10:00PM

    by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday February 21 2018, @10:00PM (#641425)

    Wow, some really impressive lists so far. Mine doesn't have anything really exotic. Only counting things I actually used for a decent period, things capable of doing interesting things to, such as installing software, extensive configuration, writing programs for. Also only counting stuff I actually used for a daily tool for some period. Yea I have used a Mac, but a few hours on someone else's machine doesn't count. Game consoles and embedded OSes in home entertainment gear don't really count. OSes spun up for a few days in a VM really don't count.

    Coco 1/3 Disk Extended Color Basic
    OS9 Level I/II (Microware, not Apple)
    C-64 BASIC
    Tandy Pocket Computer (can't remember which one now and I carried the darned thing for several years)
    MS-DOS / Windows 3.x / Win9x
    Windows NT (3.x through 7)
    Linux / GNU / X (too many variants to bother listing them all. Yggdrasil, then mostly RedHat family, now Devuan and PCLinuxOS)
    Cisco IOS
    Solaris (on a Sparc 20 with four CPUs I picked up cheap with a pair of 20" displays. Was totally sweet.)
    Palm OS
    Linux / Android (Different enough to count as a different OS)
    OpenBSD

  • (Score: 2) by isj on Sunday February 25 2018, @02:49PM

    by isj (5249) on Sunday February 25 2018, @02:49PM (#643444) Homepage

    I have used 4 families of OS's:
        - DOS
        - Unix family (Sinix, Ultrix, Tru64, AIX, Solaris, HP/UX, Linux, freebsd, MWC unix, OSX)
        - Windows (3.0, 3.1 NT 3.51, NT 4.0, 95 etc)
        - OS/2

    But there were two that I didn't have time to try, but I think they would have been interesting:
        - BS2000
        - Amoeba

    I have no particular favorite. All the OS's were reasonably good for the time and hardware and purpose. From a programming point of view I do have fond memories of the consistency in the OS/2 APIs.

  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Monday February 26 2018, @02:07PM (1 child)

    by Bot (3902) on Monday February 26 2018, @02:07PM (#643926) Journal

    The best was whatever powered my old siemens gsm phone.
    Not one glitch, easy enough not to need instructions.
    The nokia 33xx was unfriendly in comparison.

    On the PC side, debian up until wheezy was the best. Wheezy started looking a bit bloated. Then systemd happened.
    On the UX PC side, pre-quicktime MacOs was the best. All the options neatly classified in a smalltalk like menu.
    Then came quicktime with its fancy interface, which was not bad itself but opened the door to anarchy.

    --
    Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 2) by Bot on Monday February 26 2018, @02:10PM

      by Bot (3902) on Monday February 26 2018, @02:10PM (#643928) Journal

      The hp48s forth, I almost forgot.
      By putting commands between double angled brackets you had lambdas...

      --
      Account abandoned.
  • (Score: 1) by Crash on Monday February 26 2018, @09:48PM

    by Crash (1335) on Monday February 26 2018, @09:48PM (#644226)

    Commodore | Vic-20 / C64 / PET
    VAX, Unix and DOS in the 90's.
    DOS / Windows 98 / Win2K in the 00's.
    DOS / Windows 7 / Linux / Debian in the early 10's.
    Windows 7/8/10, Linux and Debian in the late 10's.

  • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday March 01 2018, @02:54PM

    by LoRdTAW (3755) on Thursday March 01 2018, @02:54PM (#645779) Journal

    Used to accomplish work:
    MS-DOS 2.1, 5.0, and 6.22 (did a lot of my grade school homework in Q&A word processor).
    Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, Vista, 7
    Android
    Various Linux Distros Since 1999 but my preference went from Redhat -> Debian -> Ubuntu -> Mint.
    OSX

    Experimented with / minor work:
    OS/2 Warp 4
    BeOS
    Plan 9 / 9 front / Harvey
    Inferno
    OpenBSD
    FreeBSD
    NetBSD
    Dragonfly BSD
    PC BSD
    Irix
    Solaris/Nexenta/illumos/etc
    ReactOS
    TempleOS
    Windows NT 4 (WS and Server)
    NeXTSTEP
    Minix
    QNX
    OpenDarwin
    Redox OS

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 01 2018, @06:00PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 01 2018, @06:00PM (#645877)

    Lets see:
    CPM, DOS, GEOS, Irix, Solaris, Minix, DrDos, PC-DOS, HP/UX, Windows, Linux, UnixWare(makes me feel dirty, now), OS/360, OS/2 Warp, PIX/IOS, OS X, OS 9, ProDOS, FreeBSD, AmigaOS, Symbian

    Trying to remember did the TI-99/4A have anything that could be considered an OS,
    BASIC maybe?

    I am counting Maemo, MeeGo and Android as Linux, which is my fave.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 01 2018, @08:21PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 01 2018, @08:21PM (#645956)

    Day to day desktop/laptop use: MacOS

    Everything else: OpenBSD

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 02 2018, @12:01AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 02 2018, @12:01AM (#646099)

    Linux for Development
    Mac for Productivity
    Palm for Portability
    Windows for Solitare

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