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What's your favorite operatingsystem?
Which operatingsystem gives you inspiration for your own one?



I begin

I like the simple user-interface of Mac OS 8. When I saw that OS in 1999 I wanted to development my own one. At that time I didn't like Unix. Now I like it very much, but there are still things in Unix I don't like in a general-purpose operatingsystem.

The older Mac OS versions (below 7) are mostly written in assembly language and are very fast. I also like OS 9 which looks like OS 8. But technically they suck. No protection against buggy applications, bad multitasting, etc..etc..

Mac OS X is technically ok, but slow, bloated and I don't like the interface. A goot compromise between the modern OS X and old Mac OS is Rhapsody. I managed to get a version of this obscure operatingsystem, that runs on an old bluewhire PowerMac G3. The system is great but it isn't complete.

Technically the best operatingsystem ever is BeOS. Too bad the original source code is owned by a company that doesn't to anything with it. It had to be given to the community. But I don't like C++ and OOP, and BeOS is full of it.

Overall the best current operatingsystem is in my opinion FreeBSD. As a server it's great. It can handle every protocol and service, it serves DOS machines like an old Novell server, Windows by Samba, it can do Appletalk and every internet service. It's fast and clean, and in my opinion easier to really understand than Linux. And everything is free! It's also a good desktop for expert computer-users with enough Unix-knowledge.

AmigaOS.

Slick, simple, and brilliant in many aspects.

locale.library, datatypes, drive / media handling, command line / shell, ARexx ports / application scripting, RAM Disk, ...

AmiNet was a cuddle from the divine.

Equipped with something like DirectoryOpus, and it was flying.

In some areas, today's operating systems have still not captured the essence of things that made the Amiga such a breeze to use. They might have copied (and extended) the functionality, but they lost the ease of it all.

Too bad that platform is (un)dead.

Windows is an instransparent, corporate / profit oriented... thingy.

And Linux is much hampered by its fragmented community. Between "complain with upstream", "RTFM" and "here's the source, fix it yourself" it's just not Grandma-compatible.

(For the statistics, I use Linux because it's free as in free beer, and loathe the whole "as in free speech" hyperbole.)

My greatest inspirations are MenuetOS and Spoon (both are completely different giving me different inspiration depending on my mood).

My favourite OS is Windows XP Tablet PC Edition.

I know people hate Windows with a pashion, and you're allowed to. It has its cons, but after using Linux for quite a few years (and still do occasionally) I've come to a conclusion that Linux is like a game. The only time boot into it is when I want to play around with Linux itself. It's a game to get my favourite programs running, configuring Linux is like a game (sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't), and when I really need to get work done I end up switching back to Windows where I'm more productive - I have Visual Studio, Visual Assist, Direct3D works fine (I do a lot of 3D programming), I have OneNote, good hand-writing recognition, just to name a few. Don't get me wrong, Linux is a wonderful operating system, and I support having alternatives to avoid a monopoly, but when I'm working in a familiar and productive environment set up just the way I like I don't see a reason to change

You can hate Windows all you like, you still can't deny that xp is a very good OS. Of course it isn't perfect, but it works for the most part and does so well.

As for my favorit OS I honestly don't know. I would say XP, but I have decided to convert to Linux so it doesn't seem right to answer XP. It doesn't seem right to answer "Linux" (some dist) either as my knowledge of Linux is still very limited.

I remember windows 3.11 which I found very good, but then again that was long before my interest in the subject was sparked.

I can probably name the first 50 or maybe even 100 OS names which definently won't be considered as my answer, but that doesn't really help.


I'll keep searching..

Solar wrote:AmigaOS.

And Linux is much hampered by its fragmented community. Between "complain with upstream", "RTFM" and "here's the source, fix it yourself" it's just not Grandma-compatible.

(For the statistics, I use Linux because it's free as in free beer, and loathe the whole "as in free speech" hyperbole.)

I agree. That's the reason use FreeBSD. Not fragmented, but it's one OS, one package system, one (very clean) filesystem layout.
Not every disadvantage of Linux will be solved with FreeBSD, because nearly the same programs will be used (Xorg, Gnome, KDE, gcc) but it's a less messy.






@MessiahAndrw: I had the same opinion till 8 years ago about Linux and Unices. That opinion dissappeared when I really learnt to know Unix. I began with a very small and clean slackware installation and installed every extra component manually (like KDE) from source. I further practiced on FreeBSD. I think that when you really understand the philosophy of Unix it isn't a puzzle or game any more, apart from the mess Linux-distro's can be. But don't learn Linux/Unix by using an easy-to-use Linux distro, because setting up a Linux/Unix system by point-and-click really is one big game

svdmeer wrote:What's your favorite operatingsystem?
Which operatingsystem gives you inspiration for your own one?

You are tempting fate with such questions.

svdmeer wrote:Mac OS X is technically ok, but slow, bloated and I don't like the interface.

Slow? Really? What version, and on what kind of hardware? I find OS X 10.4 and 10.5 to be quite speedy on my (circa 2006) iMac. In fact, that's why I switched away from XP. OS X 10.3.9 on a 350 MHz G4 was more responsive than XP on my 2 GHz Athlon64 at work!

So you can guess what my favourite OS is, at least from an end user perspective.

In terms of what inspired my own OS, I would say three things:

• QNX Neutrino
• L4
• How much Minix sucks (IMO)

I think Singularity is full of neat ideas, but I can't really say that it influenced my own kernel project because I started before the Singularity researchers published any papers.

svdmeer wrote:

Solar wrote:And Linux is much hampered by its fragmented community. Between "complain with upstream", "RTFM" and "here's the source, fix it yourself" it's just not Grandma-compatible.

I agree. That's the reason use FreeBSD. Not fragmented, but it's one OS, one package system, one (very clean) filesystem layout.
Not every disadvantage of Linux will be solved with FreeBSD, because nearly the same programs will be used (Xorg, Gnome, KDE, gcc) but it's a less messy.

I know I'm poking a wasp's nest here, but I don't see that much of a difference between Linux and *BSD with respect to useability. I salute FreeBSD for inspiring Gentoo Portage, though.

Solar wrote:And Linux is much hampered by its fragmented community. Between "complain with upstream", "RTFM" and "here's the source, fix it yourself" it's just not Grandma-compatible.

I absoulely agree with you. And this is one of the problems that need to be fixed for Linux to get bigger.

I think what Linux as a community decide which distributions are for newbies (sort of as a mascot for Linux). This way we can still have multiple distributions, but standardize on a single one for the average person.

As for the OP, I prefer Linux because it's 'free as in beer'.

EDIT: I must admit FreeBSD, IMO is the best when it comes to servers. But lacks the driver compatibility that Linux has.

Colonel Kernel wrote: Slow? Really? What version, and on what kind of hardware?

Hardware is not an issue here. Any OS can be fast if you have the right hardware, likewise it can also be slow if you don't.

The real question is if it's fast or slow on the hardware which it's expected to run on.

Edit:
Of course you question is relevant if it's the case that he has been running it on an insuficient hardwareplatform.

Zacariaz wrote:Of course you question is relevant if it's the case that he has been running it on an insuficient hardwareplatform.

That was my point. This is Apple hardware we're talking about here... The guidelines on what hardware you should use to run what version of OS X are a lot more clear and simple than in the PC world...

The two most inspirational OS's to me are probably Slackware 3.3 (only CLI) and Windows Server 2008.

Slackware 3.3 is inspirational because it was the first *nix varient I ever used and that is also the OS where I first started learning C and PERL. I configured it to be (mostly) green text on a black background as I was fairly young and wanted my screen to look cool lol.

Windows Server 2008 is inspirational as, even while still providing a GUI, can startup incredibly fast and is ready to go as a server on the first bootup. when i used it I was able to get a full ASP.NET enabled webserver and an FTP server up in just a few clicks of the button, and even though it can be GUI managed, it still leaves alot of configurability, or for the hardcore, the GUI can be turned off and sent back to a CLI.

I don't think these have any direct coorelation to my OS, but they are very inspirational non-the-less.

my favorite OS on the other hand is Ubuntu 7.10.

01000101 wrote:I configured it to be (mostly) green text on a black background as I was fairly young and wanted my screen to look cool lol.

I actually set up acrobat reader to display green on black when reading large amounts of text at the time. Feels like it's more relaxing for the eyes, but maybe I'm just iluding my self.

Usually when I've met the "catch a cold" bacteria I tend to get headaches of bright lights. As a consequence, I turn down the brightness of the monitor to some 25% to not worsen the headache. At that point, I also find the dark theme I'm using on these forums quite eye-frendly.

Hence, I seriously doubt sensitivity to large bright areas is an illusion.


But this is getting way off topic.