[GRLUG] Historical OSes

[Patrick TenHoopen]

After hearing a lot of good things about Haiku in a Computer Action Show podcast (http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/?p=1266), I downloaded the VMware image and played around with it a bit.  It is a different user experience because of the bare desktop but might have promise in the future.  Apparently everything is thread-based and you can tweak any process's threads.  It is a very quick OS.  Currently, a lack of applications and wireless card support are holding it back.  I'll be keeping an eye on it.

Date: Thu, 24 Dec 2009 07:46:47 -0500
From: bob.kline at gmail.com
To: grlug at grlug.org
Subject: [GRLUG] Historical OSes

http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/10-operating-systems-you-ve-never-heard-of-657469


An amusing look at the last 30 years
of PCs.  One sees the ebb and flow of
ideas and features between platforms,
but also sees people putting a great deal
of effort in to keeping 25+  year old OSes
alive.  While many old OSes contained 

interesting features and ideas,  I'd think
most of them have been moved to newer
platforms by now,  and but for various
nostalgia trips, it's hard to see why some
go to such great lengths to try to keep 

them alive.  

e.g., the best thing to come of Minix was
probably to teach Linus Torvalds enough
about Unix to write Linix.  Up to about
version 6,  Bell Labs used to give Unix 
source code to university CS departments

for study.  It eventually stopped doing 
that, and things like Minix filled in the
gap some.  

But Linux now mounts almost
any file system of interest, so why keep
things like DOS around?  It was last seen

in win98, which, I gather, was mostly an
overlay on DOS.

Otherwise, this is a study in PC history,
which anyone old enough to remember
some of the chestnuts will connect with.

    -- Bob

 		 	   		  
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