Ever Use A Non-Windows, Non-Mac Operating System?

Airstud · Mon Mar 08, 2010 4:52 am

I have used RedHat Linux 9 (million years old tho it is; I found it charming) on my old Toshiba Tecra-type laptop.

I've also used VMS and Tandem NSK, although those don't run on PC's. Have never used OS/390 (now known as zOS) or Unisys's OS2200; though I think they might be neat.

I think some airlines use Unisys for their resermavation systems, topically enough...

There is also talk that an OS called "Oberon" will run on my PC; and I have tried it...either it doesn't work or I do not know what I am doing (nice going).

Flighty · Mon Mar 08, 2010 4:54 am

Ubuntu is popular and works well. It is another Linux that self installs. Not perfect, but it's nice.

Ken777 · Mon Mar 08, 2010 5:11 am

I had an Atari . . .

desertjets · Mon Mar 08, 2010 5:15 am

I once had a job where the computers used OS/2 Warp.....

757MDE · Mon Mar 08, 2010 5:15 am

I used Linux for a while, and also tried Solaris for the sake of it.
As of right now very happy with my Windows 7 64 bit.

Stealthz · Mon Mar 08, 2010 5:31 am

Hell Yeah,

Apple DOS 3.3
Apple ProDOS
MS-DOS various versions
PC-DOS many versions
CP/M various versions
OS/2
UNIX
Xenix
SCO OpenServer
SCO UNIXWare

There are many more but my brain hurts thinging of them all

PITingres · Mon Mar 08, 2010 5:49 am

I expected this question to come from an 18-year-old, and was about to ignore it. Then I checked the OP's profile. Profiles are not gospel, of course, but ok...

Broadly speaking, there's the various unixen (Solaris, HP/UX, AIX, SCO unix, XENIX, etc etc). From a sufficient distance, GNU/Linux fits into this slot. I guess I've been developing on Unix-ish OS's for about 27 years now.

Then there are the DEC PDP-11-ish OS's, RT11, RSX11, RSTS. (I've used RSTS but not the others.)

I never had the (mis?)fortune of using any of the mainstream IBM mainframe OS variants (DOS/VS, MVS, VM, or whatever they call it these days). I did have some experience with the CMU-modified variant of TSS/360. (Wikipedia THAT one!)

DEC again: TOPS-10 (not only used it, but did a lot of development for it), TOPS-20 (ugh) for the DECsystem-10 and -20 series machines. Oddly enough, I only had a short brush with their more recent OS, VAX/VMS, in the 2000's as a consultant.

I had a brief tangle with CP-M on a mid-1980's vintage micro.

Perhaps the most unusual OS I've used was Univac's EXEC II for the 1108.

There are probably any number of RT/OS's on the cars I drive today, but I'm not aware of them, so they don't count.

BMI727 · Mon Mar 08, 2010 6:07 am

Quoting PITingres (Reply 6):
I expected this question to come from an 18-year-old,

Even I have had to use a Linux virtual machine. It was a little cumbersome, but I could have gotten used to it.

elbandgeek · Mon Mar 08, 2010 6:37 am

I dual-boot Ubuntu along with Windows on my laptop and enjoy using it alot. Sometimes I'll get in a mood and use it as my primary OS, but that's happened less often since I upgraded from Vista to 7.

cpd · Mon Mar 08, 2010 9:28 am

Ubuntu - but only for an emergency data rescue from a dead Lacie Ethernet Disk Mini.

ajd1992 · Mon Mar 08, 2010 11:35 am

I had a dual-boot PC a long time ago - XP and Ubuntu. I could never really get into it though, I couldn't get my head around using it. I eventually uninstalled it after I corrupted both partitions and made a mess of everything. Much to the annoyance of my dad who had to sort it out

(In my defence, I could, he just wouldn't let me after the mess I'd made in the first place). I also used OSX 10.5/XP or Vista on my old MacBook but that's not the question of the thread.

I wouldn't do it again, though.

captaink · Mon Mar 08, 2010 12:26 pm

I sometimes run Ubuntu. It is a nice OS, but it isn't really ready to compete in the true sense of the word with OSX or Windows (in my case 7 ultimate).

Klaus · Mon Mar 08, 2010 12:30 pm

I'm regularly using Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, a few specialized embedded and other OSes and have written a few myself. Of course through the years I've used some of the now historical ones since the 8-bit era and before.

aer lingus · Mon Mar 08, 2010 12:36 pm

I used Linux Mandrake 8.5 for less than a week around 10 years ago.

Quoting ajd1992 (Reply 10):
I had a dual-boot PC a long time ago - XP and Ubuntu. I could never really get into it though, I couldn't get my head around using it. I eventually uninstalled it after I corrupted both partitions and made a mess of everything.

I was trying setting up a dual boot PC with the Linux I mentioned above and XP. After spending days making both OS systems to work, I wrecked my new 60GB hard disk. Unable to reformat the hard disk and un-bootable, so that was the end of the Linux and my new 60 GB hard disk. I'm never setting up a dual boot system again.

Revelation · Mon Mar 08, 2010 12:44 pm

Quoting PITingres (Reply 6):
DEC again: TOPS-10 (not only used it, but did a lot of development for it),

Never used it although for some strange reason it fascinates me. I used to read alt.sys.pdp10 and considered loading up some of the various emulators for it but never have gotten around to it.

Going in historical order, here's the ones I recall:
- DEC's educational OS for PDP-8
- RSX on PDP-11
- Whatever OS was on the TRS-80
- MVS then CMS on IBM 3084 mainframe
- UNIX Version 6 on PDP-11
- VAX/VMS Version 4 on VAX 11/780
- Good old MS/DOS on 8088, 80286, 80386, 80486
- IBM's AIX on RT, PS/2 and 3090 Mainframe
- SunOS on UltraSPARC 5 and various servers
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux of various flavors
- Ubuntu of various flavors

NoWorries · Mon Mar 08, 2010 1:23 pm

Having been in commercial software development for almost 35 years, I think I've used (to varying degrees) almost everything that is commonly available -- and have written programs for a good many of those environments as well.

The bulk of my early career was IBM mainframe (MVS now called z/OS and VM now called z/VM) -- lots of low-level assembly lanuage programming.

One widely available OS that I've used but never programmed is Mac OS -- don't have any biases against it, the need just never arose.

For varioius emotional reasons my favoriate OS is z/VM.

The thing that strikes me is that most OSes aren't really all that different from one another when you bore down to the metal -- not suprising I guess since most hardware isn't all that different from one another either.

racko · Mon Mar 08, 2010 2:13 pm

Starting from the good old MS-DOS I have used Windows 3, OS/2 Warp, Mac OS 8, Windows 95, Windows NT 4, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Mac OS X, SUSE Linux, Windows XP, Ubuntu and Windows 7.

Judging by the initial "Wow, this is great"-effect the 3 most impressive of all those were OS/2, Mac OS X and Windows 7. Currently I'm using Windows 7 and I have to say that I really like it. After the whole Vista disaster I really thought MS had lost it, but Office 2007 with the really nice Ribbon interface and Windows 7 are actually really, really nice.

LTU932 · Mon Mar 08, 2010 2:18 pm

I used MS-DOS since version 4.01. I also used the Commodore 64 that we had in our Elementary School, and I had an Atari with its own Basic system.

signol · Mon Mar 08, 2010 2:27 pm

The netbook I'm using now runs Linpus Linux

I've also got a desktop with Ubuntu.
At work, as well as the normal XP laptop, I've used Centos (both GUI and CLI) and Fedora.
At university we occasionally used Solaris (at work, if a call comes in for Solaris, there's a collective groan!)
Also used Secure Platform at work.

signol

Revelation · Mon Mar 08, 2010 2:32 pm

Quoting ajd1992 (Reply 10):
I had a dual-boot PC a long time ago - XP and Ubuntu.

A bit before that I set up a Pentium Pro machine in quad-boot: Win98, WinNT, FreeBSD and RedHat.

This was with two 4GB disks on fast/wide scsi circa 1998 or so.

At first I did it for the coolness factor and to try out all those different OSes.

And in the end it spent most of its time in Windows 98 because I had gotten into playing Quake and had gotten two Voodoo boards set up in SLI mode.

I think I even recycled the drive that had BSD and Linux on it so I could have more room for games, and because I had other machines I was running *nix on.

I've kept that machine all these years just because of the fond memories.

Every now and again I power it up and have a go at Quake.

WildcatYXU · Mon Mar 08, 2010 3:10 pm

I routinely use linux to retrieve data from crashed hard drives. One or two computers in our household are usually configured as dual system machines. I used to use Mandriva, but I switched to Ubuntu recently.

LTU932 · Mon Mar 08, 2010 3:20 pm

And to add: I also tried Ubuntu a couple of times. Both times, it didn't take long for it to get lost from my harddrive.

Go3Team · Mon Mar 08, 2010 3:57 pm

If I'm not using Vista or 7, I'm using Ubuntu. It's much easier to use it for network shares and NFS. My VOD systems backend is Ubuntu. I like it.

bhill · Mon Mar 08, 2010 9:33 pm

Used to support RTE and MPE back in my HP days....20 Mb disks drives (platters/packs) with enclosures the size of small freezers...

PITingres · Tue Mar 09, 2010 2:04 am

Quoting Revelation (Reply 14):
DEC's educational OS for PDP-8

I forgot to put that one down. EDUsystem-50, also known (at least at CMU) as TSS/8. That was a remarkable little setup, and I've met very few people who have even heard of it, much less used it.

Fly2HMO · Tue Mar 09, 2010 2:10 am

Commodore 64 count?

Revelation · Tue Mar 09, 2010 2:34 am

Quoting PITingres (Reply 24):
I forgot to put that one down. EDUsystem-50, also known (at least at CMU) as TSS/8. That was a remarkable little setup, and I've met very few people who have even heard of it, much less used it.

We had one in my high school in the late 70s.

We had two terminals and one DECwriter in the main room.

There also was one operator's console in the back room, a genuine Teletype machine with paper tape reader.

It had a card reader that read cards we marked using a pencil, two marks per character.

We would mark the cards up with BASIC code whose output would print on the DECwriter.

The two terminals were mostly used for playing games like Star Trek and football, when we could get away with it.

Once every two months or so the DEC field service guy would come by and vaccum the dust from the core memory.

Yes, real cores with real wires wrapped around them, I saw it up close and personal.

Not sure how much of it there was, but IIRC the 8 could only natively address 4096 12-bit words I'd say 'not much'..

Since I was an advanced student, the teacher let me try out FORTRAN!

Yes, quite geeky, but it's lead to a pretty lucrative career.

IH8BY · Tue Mar 09, 2010 11:06 pm

I have a rare (outside the UK, anyway) machine in my room called an Acorn A7000+. It runs a little-known operating system called RiscOS 3.7, which was the main OS we used in my IT classes at school about ten years ago. It's loaded into ROM, so it's practically indestructible, and boasts a GUI that's years ahead of its time. I only run the machine occasionally these days, but it's a nice little reminder of a British company that tried to do something a little differently...

PITingres · Wed Mar 10, 2010 12:29 am

Quoting Revelation (Reply 26):
Once every two months or so the DEC field service guy would come by and vaccum the dust from the core memory.

Yes, real cores with real wires wrapped around them, I saw it up close and personal.

Not sure how much of it there was, but IIRC the 8 could only natively address 4096 12-bit words I'd say 'not much'..

The higher end EDUsystem-50 boxes had 24K; I think there were other variations with less. The PDP-8 had a tricked-out instruction set with a 7 bit memory offset which addressed either the "current" bank of 128 words, or bank 0. You could also use the 7-plus-bank offset to indirectly address through a full 12-bit address. To get past the basic 4K address space, it used bank switching, but I don't know the details. (Probably a bank-switch register addressed as an I/O device.)

Unfortunately the PDP-8 at CMU was tucked away behind a Comp Center wall, so I never laid eyes on it. It was one of the few, if not the only, "free" computing system at the time that didn't have a runtime limit. So, all the EE's loved them. At any given time you could go into the terminal room and at least 3 of the half-dozen or so TTY's would have big signs "Do Not Touch", but everything would seem to be idle ... until after an hour or so of computing, the TTY would chug into life and plot another point on the graph ...

That PDP-8 got me into computing as well. Inside of a couple weeks of discovering it, I was pissing around with assembly programming. About a year after I was there, its disk drive crashed, and they decided not to replace it. A shame. I think the CPU vanished into the bowels of Hamerschlag (the EE building), probably ended up running a coke machine or something.

[Edited 2010-03-09 16:32:36]

connies4ever · Wed Mar 10, 2010 12:34 am

TOPS-10 (DEC PDP-10 O/S)
RT-11 (DEC PDP-11)
RSX-11 (ditto)
VMS
Unicos (Cray XMP/YMP)
Solaris
AIX
ULTRIX
IRIX
Various Linux (RH, SUSE, Xandra)
Various IBM incarnations
HP-UX

When I retire I'm going to an ashram to get deprogrammed.

Klaus · Wed Mar 10, 2010 12:52 am

Quoting connies4ever (Reply 29):
When I retire I'm going to an ashram to get deprogrammed.

It's already too late.

These grooves won't go away with just a bit of spit and a polishing rag...!

don81603 · Wed Mar 10, 2010 2:48 am

I started with the Commodore Pet 4096, VIC 20, Commodore 64, GEOS v1.1, then GEOS 2.0, Apple IIc, MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, 98 (the best version so far, IMHO), ME (Many Errors), and XP.

HT · Wed Mar 10, 2010 7:12 pm

Past times: several DOS's on X86 CPUs

Modern times:
I used Ubuntu running from a USB-stick on two business notebooks, leaving the (business) harddisk untouched. Went well until the installation on the USB-stick crashed while auto-updating to a higher realease.

My primary-use, private (very old) notebook appears to be incompatible with any Linux I tried. Some run basically, but none of them was able to configure my LAN or WiFI-adaptor.

Netbook for travel stays with its current OS (XP).
-HT

sprout5199 · Wed Mar 10, 2010 8:19 pm

Does BASIC count?

I used an AN/UYK-20 in the navy but have no clue what OS it used--had to enter stuff in octal, oh fun. 64K of non-volatile magnetic core memory. You could actually see the little ferrite beads on the memory board.

Dan in Jupiter

EA772LR · Wed Mar 10, 2010 9:38 pm

I'm not sure if this counts, but I've been using the Android OS software based Googel G1 phone for over a year and a half. I believe Google will be releasing the Android OS for PCs, not Macs.

TEBGuy · Thu Mar 11, 2010 12:58 am

I run Ubuntu 9.10 on my G4 PowerBook (1.33GHz). Does everything i need it to, and is quicker & more stable than Mac OS 10.5 on that machine. That being said, i do run Mac OS 10.5 on my other G4 (dual 1.25GHz desktop), primarily so i have iTunes and Adobe CS2 at my disposal.

PhilGil · Sun Mar 14, 2010 8:05 pm

Another satisfied Ubuntu user...

Ubuntu 9.10 on my home desktop
Ubuntu 9.10 Netboox Remix on my netbook
Ubuntu 9.04 on my office desktop

I rarely use Windows, but I have two VirtualBox installs (one Win 2k, one Win XP), for the few things I can't do in Ubuntu. My office uses a remote-hosting service (running on Windows Server 2003), so I can work from any OS that can access a remote desktop.

falstaff · Sun Mar 14, 2010 8:38 pm

Sure have.

I used to work with a Commodore Amiga for a job I had back in 1995-97. I don't know what the operating system was called, but it sure wasn't Windows.

I got my first computer back in 1984 for Christmas. It was a Commodore 64. After that I had IBM XT. Just good old DOS on that machine. I used to keep track of everything with a managment program called Pathminder. It was a great program and it good way to keep track of all of the files. I also had a IBM PS2 model 50 with DOS on it.

When I was a kid I used a variety of Apple II computers and even a WANG computer a few times.

Airstud · Sun Mar 14, 2010 11:17 pm

Quoting falstaff (Reply 37):
I used to work with a Commodore Amiga for a job I had back in 1995-97. I don't know what the operating system was called

Probably....AmigaOS!!!

Revelation · Sun Mar 14, 2010 11:45 pm

Quoting PITingres (Reply 28):

The higher end EDUsystem-50 boxes had 24K; I think there were other variations with less. The PDP-8 had a tricked-out instruction set with a 7 bit memory offset which addressed either the "current" bank of 128 words, or bank 0. You could also use the 7-plus-bank offset to indirectly address through a full 12-bit address. To get past the basic 4K address space, it used bank switching, but I don't know the details. (Probably a bank-switch register addressed as an I/O device.)

That jives with my recollections from a few lectures in a college "computer organization" that were about the pdp-8.

Quoting PITingres (Reply 28):
That PDP-8 got me into computing as well. Inside of a couple weeks of discovering it, I was pissing around with assembly programming. About a year after I was there, its disk drive crashed, and they decided not to replace it. A shame. I think the CPU vanished into the bowels of Hamerschlag (the EE building), probably ended up running a coke machine or something.

That would be par for the course.

Quoting sprout5199 (Reply 33):
I used an AN/UYK-20 in the navy but have no clue what OS it used--had to enter stuff in octal, oh fun. 64K of non-volatile magnetic core memory. You could actually see the little ferrite beads on the memory board.

I googled a bit and saw a few of these.

They seemed to come with a paper tape reader.

I doubt they had an operating system per se.

I bet it'd just run a single program till someone reloaded a new paper tape.

Did the ones you used have any other I/O devices?

N801NW · Mon Mar 15, 2010 1:18 am

Quoting Airstud (Reply 38):
Quoting falstaff (Reply 37):
I used to work with a Commodore Amiga for a job I had back in 1995-97. I don't know what the operating system was called

Probably....AmigaOS!!!

Close...it was AmigaDOS. The ROM software was "Kickstart" and the GUI was "Workbench."

[Edited 2010-03-14 18:19:08]

sprout5199 · Mon Mar 15, 2010 4:55 pm

Quoting Revelation (Reply 39):
Did the ones you used have any other I/O devices?

IIRC we used the paper tape to load the program, and a different one to run diagnostics. then enter other things with the inside panel, using octal. also had a TTY(90ma/ no 90ma) input and output. It was used to sort through the fleet messages to see what needed to be printed.

I also worked on a peice of crypto gear that had over 600 TUBES in it. That was fun.

Dan in Jupiter

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