BYTE.com > Advanced Software and Technologies > 2002
An Octet of Operating Systems
By Bill Nicholls
September 3, 2002
(An Octet of Operating Systems
: Page 1 of 1 )
With all the publicity that Windows and Linux get, you may
be forgiven for not being aware of a number of other operating systems. Yet
there are many other choices that I find interesting and as useful alternatives.
Five Desktop Alternatives:
- OS/2 Convenience Pack from IBM
- eCS, OS/2 plus enhancements from Serenity Systems
- OpenBeOS, an open source version of the OS developed by Be
- BeOS 5 personal
- Amiga, the phoenix of operating systems
Three Emulator/Virtual Machine Systems:
The last three OSes on the list are qualitatively different from the
rest—they are designed as emulators or virtual machines that can run more
than one OS at a time, shared in one set of hardware. Like the story
about the dancing bear, what is remarkable given the ancient x86 design
is not how well they work, but that they work at all.
Be aware that this short list is by no means exhaustive. There are
several more commercial or open OSes that are mature and in use, but even
this list will be enough to digest at one time.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have used Microsoft Windows from 1.01 in
1985 to Windows 3.1, and subsequently Windows 95/98 and NT. In the '87–'89
timeframe, I ran DesQview and Windows together. From the 1991 beta of OS/2 2.0
up to today's eCS 1.0, and including all versions between, OS/2 has been my primary desktop. In
addition, I currently run NT, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD as well as the
occasional Linux.
The Development of OS/2
People new to computers in the '90s probably don't know this background,
and some may have forgotten. Microsoft was OS/2's chief competitor in
the '90s, but it didn't start that way. Way back in the '86–'87 timeframe, OS/2
was a cooperative effort between Microsoft and IBM. Yep, the two
goliaths were cooperating, in principle at least.
OS/2 became an IBM-only project in 1989. Microsoft chose to develop
Windows further in competition with OS/2. The cause of this battle is
debatable, but it ultimately evolved into ownership of the desktop OS.
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