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March 28, 2009

10 best alternative operating systems in history

The world left these platforms behind

Matt Lake

Operating systems can fill us with love, and in some cases hate. In fact when its comes to your computer's platform, some users get very attached. As the tech community gears up to celebrate Unix's 40th birthday this summer, one thing is clear: People do love operating systems.

They rely on them, get exasperated by them and live with their little foibles. If that's not the basis of a lasting love, I don't know what is.

In more than 30 years of the PC, there's a number of OS's that have fallen by the wayside. However we've rounded up what we think are the 10 most memorable operating systems. Some of them lasted for years. Some of them had remarkably short lives but inspired trends that we are benefiting from to this day. And a few of them ... well, they were just cool for school.

Oh say, can you CP/M?

In the era when The Ramones and Blondie were regulars in the Top 40, our Altairs and Ataris needed something to make programming applications easier. A rogue mind at Digital Research named Gary Kildall developed the Control Program for Microcomputers to do just that - and the era of the microcomputer operating system began.

It's no exaggeration to say that CP/M was there at the beginning of the personal computing revolution. With CP/M to provide a layer of insulation over the processor, independent software developers just concentrated on making programs that worked for their users. Two of our early favourite programs - WordStar and dBase - were developed for CP/M; thanks to the operating system, they could run unaltered on 8080-, 8088- and 8086-based computers.

CP/M also gave us the command line options we came to know and love. The perennial favorite DIR command made its microcomputer debut in CP/M, and so did the eight-character maximum file name plus three-character extension that we lived with for so long.

It's not stretching a point to say that CP/M is the godfather of DOS - the operating system that ran the Apple II and generations of PCs. In fact, it may be understating the case to call it the godfather: DOS could have been CP/M's twin. It used the same APIs and shared many of the same commands.

Only one significant command was different: to copy files, DOS used the COPY command and CP/M used an old DEC minicomputer program name, PIP.

A decade later, look-and-feel lawsuits were won on less evidence than that. Too bad the lawyers back then were not as far ahead of their time as Gary Kildall.

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NEXT PAGE: DOS

 

  1. The world left these platforms behind 
  2. DOS
  3. Mac OS
  4. Adios, Amigas
  5. Golly GEOS
  6. OS/2
  7. NeXT
  8. BeOS
  9. Windows 95
  10. X

Continued...
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | NEXT >

<<newer story | back to index | older story>>

Comments received


DeathKnell said on Saturday, 28 March 2009

What about the real oldies like:

OS/360, VM, VMS, GeOrgE, RSTS, RT-11, AIMS

Richard Gates said on Monday, 30 March 2009

10 Best Alternative OS in history. You can tell your research sources were only American. RISC-OS hasn't been compared with this lot either for market share - where it would lose against some OS but quality and ideas before others 32 bit and threaded?!

Neil Hutchinson said on Monday, 30 March 2009

What about RISC OS?
Acorn computers are still available, I believe - for those who still enthuse over an OS that pioneered a proper GUI for the domestic market. I had different RISC OS machines from around 1989 for best part of a decade until I 'converted' to PCs.

Bill Smith said on Monday, 30 March 2009

You have forgotten OS8 the Digital Equipment Corp operating system for the PDP8. I feel sure that it preceded CP/M and always thought that DOS took its ideas from it. It was simpler to use than DOS and its file system didn't get arthritis as the files were never fragmented. Youu just had to do a quick disk sqish evry now and them

Skidz said on Tuesday, 31 March 2009

Yep John go see your shrink.

Matt Egan, Managing Editor said on Tuesday, 31 March 2009

Sorry about that, chaps. Bit of an overnight spam shower, now expunged. There's 20 minutes of my life I'm never getting back...

Skidz said on Tuesday, 31 March 2009

LOL@Matt,
I wondered what was going on late last night !
Thanks for clearing and cleaning that one up.

Sid said on Tuesday, 31 March 2009

No claims for the Atari TOS system but there was Magic! which was pre-emptively multitasking in the early 90s - something Windows couldn't manage until W98 (after a fashion).

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