How many (major) operating systems are out there? (1 Viewer)

[Neil Joseph]

I am trying to do some research and I don't want to miss any of the major computer o/s's for home use. So far I have

- Win 3.1

- Win 95

- Win 98

- Win NT

- Win ME

- Win 2000

- Win XP

- OS/2

- Unix

- Linux

- Mac O/S

Any others? I won't be considering minor upgrades like Win 3.11 etc, I will just lump those under the major heading, Win 3.1 for example.

Thanks,

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Depends what you mean by 'major'. Me was not a major release, 95 was. The next major release was NT4, then 2000, then XP. 98 and Me were really just 'inbetween' releases as they're all based on the 95 kernal. Actually, I'm not even sure XP qualifies as a 'major' release, but it seems to be doing pretty well.
But if that's not what you mean, then don't forget 98 Second Edition too Oops, you've also got 95OSR2 (or 95b).
OS/2 I wouldn't have thought had that much exposure in the home market, but I might be wrong (I'm sure Phil Hamm might have something to say on that! )
'Unix' is a bit too broad. You've got FreeBSD and OpenBSD which like Linux, are derived from 'true' Unix, but they're not exatly the same. You can't go out and buy 'Unix'. There are dozens of commercial versions of Unix out there, including HP, Dynix, AIX, and of course Solaris, none of which are intended for home markets.
You can break Linux down into all of the various distributions, the major ones being RedHat (commerically popular), Mandrake, Slackware, Debian, Suse. They're all 'slightly' different.
You've also got BEOS, but that's even more geek-based than Linux.

 

[Patrick Sun]

DOS?

 

[Iain Lambert]

I must admit, it seems a bit contrary to list no less than SEVEN! different flavours of Windows (when 3.11, 95, NT and 2000 would do fine) and then go class 'Unix', 'Linux' and 'MacOS' under single headings. There have been at least as many flavours of MacOS over the years, and even right now 9.x and X.x are both being run side by side.

 

[MickeS]

Plus, Win 3.1 and Win 3.11 really had some substantial differences to them, if I remember correctly.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

CP/M

AmigaDOS

Gem

Ahh the good old days.

 

[Trace Downing]

Mac OS-X is very different that the other 9 variations of MacOS...it should be included separately, if your going to do the various windows generations separately.

If you really want to thrill people, tell them about TOS, Atari ST's os system, and EXEC...the os for Mattel Intellevision. I get lots of oohs and ahs with those.:p)

 

[Scott Merryfield]

What about IBM mainframe operating systems, such as VM and MVS? Also, there are other flavors of Unix, such as AIX and Solaris. And I am sure there are still people out there running DEC's proprietary O/S -- VMS. There are many more examples for mid-range and higher systems (OS/400, anyone?).

EDIT -- Sorry, Neil, but I missed the line stating "for home use". Nevermind.

 

[Steven K]

Solaris is king!

Hail to the king, baby!

and no, I'm not talking about the infernal x86 Solaris... SPARC is the only way to go with Solaris.

Edit:

they're all based on the 95 kernal

I don't understand why it is so hard to spell KERNEL

 

[Jason Handy]

Another Windows OS that was missed is Windows CE. Many handheld computers used this stripped-down version of windows that requires less RAM and almost no hard drive. I would consider this one to be much more different than any of the Windows 95-era OSs because of the hardware demands placed on making this thing run.

Jason

 

[LDfan]

Don't forget Novell!

Also the VAX OS was popular a long time ago and still used today.

Jeff

 

[Brett DiMichele]

DOS

Win3.1

Win3.11

Win95

Win98

WinME

Win2K

NT 4.0

WinCE

WinXP

Solaris

Unix

Linux

AIX

Mac OS

Mac OS-X

OS-2

OS-2 Warp

IBM OS 390

MVS

VM

VAX

Okay did we miss any? (I am sure we did)

And if we wanted to get more technical we could

break Linux down into the many flavours avilable

same goes for all the Mac OS Versions.

 

[Steven K]

You missed BeOS

 

[LDfan]

Novell

more UNIX choices ---> IRIX, HPUX, SCO, Tru64Unix

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

Wasn't 3.11 for workgroups like a pretty big difference from straigh 3.11? I was only a kid at the time - but I thought workgroup edition could be argued as a different OS. ALthough I guess you could argue they were both GUI for dos anyway...

Certainly DOS should be on the initial list. OSX is certainly different than other Mac OS.

-Vince

 

[Alan Curry]

Didn't see CP/M. If it we're me I would at least remove Windows 3.1x since they actually ran on top of DOS. (I don't count 386 enhance mode)

 

[DonRoeber]

If you're going to count Windows 3.x as an OS, you can't rule out GeoOS and GeoWorks. Personally, I'd call Windows 3.x and GeOS/GeoWorks Operatig Environments, rather than full blown operating systems.

 

[MikeAlletto]

If you are going to break out all the versions of windows then you should do the same for MacOS. At least Mac 6, OS7, OS8, OS8.5, OS9, OS9.5, OS X. I wouldn't consider Windows 3x an OS. It was just a window manager on top of DOS.

 

[Brett DiMichele]

All Win OS's still contain core DOS files and we could say

the same thing about newer versions. But we know that would

be stretching the truth.

 

[Paul O]

Sun Solaris is by far the most popular commercial version of Unix..second would be HPUX or AIX. I think all the other commercial "Ux's" are going away. And as Steven said Solaris is the best - its good to be the King!