In this thread we'll talk about less common operating systems such as QNX, Haiku, Plan 9, OS/2 and so on.
Exotic/Niche Operating Systems Thread
Lucas Taylor
Other urls found in this thread:
toastytech.com
en.wikipedia.org
twitter.com
Gavin Smith
that looks really nice.
there used to be a CDE like shell for DOS but I still have not been able to find it
Liam Young
Not GEM?
Leo Russell
no it literally had the same title bar, the same close and maximize buttons as in the pic related, but it was on DOS. CDRom Today used it for their DOS menu for demos. I haven't been able to find one since.
Easton Morgan
I used kinda obscure variant of Linux called Xandros (2.5 & 3.0). Was pretty nice, had this program called Crossovers, which allowed you to install/run MS Office if you wanted. Latest version of Xandros released was v 4.0. (2006)(Don't got it). After that, Xandros fell off the map. Xandros, was billed as Windows Replacement, so they made it as easy/windows like as possible which for long time windows user was a godsend.
William Roberts
Also used BeOS as a main system for almost a year or two, it worked fine for most everything I needed it, plus I had shit specs and BeOS increased the stability and what I was able to do more with it than with Windows.
Jacob Morris
Was it that obscure? I installed it on my brothers computer and he used it for a few years before getting tired of it. He wanted to get away from XP problems, which there were many, and he was pretty happy with Xandros, which i stole from the internet.
Isaiah Carter
Well you don't see many talking about it/mentioning it anymore and torrents of it all dead. The last release, v 4 oce, the torrents of that all died quick. After 2006, Xandros died, least in terms of os. They still have website but they do other shit now. Wish to hell I grabbed v 4, but I was happy with version 3 at the time.
Jordan Hall
QNX demo disk was really impressive, all that stuff packed just on single 1.44M floppy and it just worked.
Juan Butler
>Well you don't see many talking about it/mentioning
It was around at a weird time, the other alternative to it was Lycoris, and they were competing with free alternatives, Xandros marketted itself towards the home user not the corporate market, very few home users would be looking for an alternative as far as I know. The ones who were open to such, could just install other distros which were more user friendly. Also, at the same time, Ubuntu was starting to give out free CDs to install and run on your PC without any exprience, it was a better user exprience for people who never actually touched linux.
In short, Xandros, didn't adapt and died.
Ayden Hughes
I remember it had 3Com Etherlink driver on the disk, I booted it up on a 386, working internet with a graphical windowing system and browser from a single 1.44MB floppy on a 386...
Kevin Price
>OS/2
I don't think it is obscure, it's just dead. Probably only people still using it are those with legacy software that would be too expensive to port to Win/Lin/BSD
William Perry
Aww. Make some noise if you ever find it. That'd be interesting, very.
Damn I do miss AmigaOS.
Jose Rogers
Based thread, although qnx is very far from obscure.
Jonathan Richardson
Several operating systems mentioned here are far from obscure, it's just that most people on Jow Forums have a limited view on the world of operating systems making anything that's not mentioned several times a day on Jow Forums automatically *obscure* for them.
Angel Sullivan
So can I run QNX today? What software is there for it?
Brayden Robinson
I'll let mr.jewgle answer that one for me
Jason Adams
I'm gonna download a few of these discs and see what's in the executable.
Jonathan Cook
Josiah Fisher
It's probably being used in your car
Lincoln Sullivan
OpenVMS anyone?
en.wikipedia.org
Anthony Miller
I'll drop a few in here. Let's start with FreeDOS with OpenGEM as a desktop shell. Works great on toasters for very basic word processing and running old DOS games. I recommend using it in QEMU or on real hardware. It doesn't seem to boot on VirtualBox for whatever reason.
Nathaniel Gutierrez
For a modern microkernel OS based on the Genode framework and seL4, you can use Sculpt OS. It's a bit difficult to use and the default GUI is garbage. Otherwise it's a pretty neat OS that's very secure and stable.
Anthony Miller
hell yeah, used to frequent death row and the other popular public openvms server cluster
Grayson Hall
AROS looks neat. I tried it in a VM but it was so slow that I couldn't use it. It might be better on real hardware, so I might try that out later today. It's basically an Amiga OS clone. It uses a microkernel and has a sane UI with a lot of room for themes and stuff.
Daniel Sanchez
Here's React OS, an open source Windows NT 5 clone. It will run most Win32 programs and works okay in VirtualBox at low display resolutions. It's very buggy still and runs like raped ape on real hardware.
Gabriel Moore
I love beos/haiku...
Noah Fisher
Not quite as obscure as others, but has been mostly lost to time from what I can see. Mac OS 9 and earlier versions can be run pretty well in VMs like SheepShaver or QEMU/TGC. Sheepshaver is a PowerPC Mac emulator that works best on Intel and AMD platforms. Generally you'll get around 1/8th the native performance, so a 3.5GHz core will give you 300-400MHz in the VM, which is pretty damn good for OS 9.
Also, SheepShaver only runs up to 9.0.4, whereas QEMU can run up to 9.2. For the best results I recommend Mac OS 8.6 in SheepShaver.
Robert Allen
For the older classic Macs you can run OS 1-7 in Mini vMac which is many times faster and more stable than the original hardware. Again, not super obscure but still fun to play around with. Mini vMac will run great on even the shittiest Android chinkfone.
Gavin Flores
OP mentioned OS/2, so here's Arca OS 5.0. It's basically OS/2 Warp 4, except the company behind it got permission from IBM to reverse engineer the kernel to do bug fixes and add more hardware support, and then reskin and sell it. It does cost like $100 for the personal version.
Jack Allen
I've always been interested in OS/2 Warp. Binary compatible with native i386 windows PE's.
Additionally, Morphos is pretty cool. PowerPC only OS with a built in low level 68K emulation layer. Pretty sweet, but very pricey OS.
Joshua Garcia
the biggest issue is hardware support. it's hard to find anything that works on specific hardware. and even then it's hardly ever optimized for good-enough-day-to-day performance.
Matthew Edwards
Blackberry Inc discontinued the desktop gui
Evan Young
Tfw email qnx to see about getting a student license so I could rice it
Tfw they denied me it
Ethan Williams
IE was on mac os ???
Lincoln Clark
Yes. Safari didn't exist until like OS X 10.2 or 10.3.
Ryan Jones
So those interfaces were made with NeoBook. It doesn't seem it's running on top of a proper windowing system. Seems to be just a VGA program that has a quasi window system.
Camden Myers
Look up the crowd reaction when gates and jobs announced it'd be the default browser lol
Michael Long
that looks a lot like it
Anthony Reyes
that was a culminating moment for a lot of reasons.
It was the return of Jobs to Apple, a return funded by gates, a return that required jobs to swallow a lot of frogs and put the past behind him.
Landon Robinson
>Not quite as obscure as others
It was not obscure at all.
People really don't know what the word means...
Jordan Brown
It's almost as obscure as the others now.