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How many operating systems have you used (comment with your favorite)
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sillema sillema nika su
(Score: 4, Insightful) by acid andy on Monday February 05 2018, @07:36PM (16 children)
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)
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
release versions?! But I'm on Gentoo!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @10:00PM (2 children)
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)
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
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)
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)
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
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
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
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
My interpretation of this question implies "with full privileges".
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:31PM (4 children)
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)
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)
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
Luckily my CPU is probably too old to include Minix.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @09:00AM
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.