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How many operating systems have you used (comment with your favorite) | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 108 comments | Search Discussion
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  • (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.

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