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Comments: 875 +- Technology: Old Operating Systems Never Die on Thursday September 17, @12:59PM
Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday September 17, @12:59PM
from the they-just-start-running-in-loops dept.
from the they-just-start-running-in-loops dept.
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Harry writes "Haiku, an open-source re-creation of legendary 1990s operating system BeOS, was released in alpha form this week. The news made me happy and led me to check in on the status of other once-prominent OSes — CP/M, OS/2, AmigaOS, and more. Remarkably, none of them are truly defunct: In one form or another, they or their descendants are still available, being used by real people to accomplish useful tasks. Has there ever been a major OS that simply went away, period?"
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MacOS 9 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:MacOS 9 (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, as recently as last year I encountered a user who had OS 9 at home, running some ancient version of the mac version of IE (5.x), he was having issues with some third party websites and software but refused to accept that the problem was on his end, kind of like your average Win95/98/ME user...
/Mikael
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Re:MacOS 9 (Score:5, Informative)
I'm lucky enough to have a iMac (not using it right now) with OS 9 and IE 5 and the internet is pretty much unusable. Flash doesn't work, so no youtube, and webmail sites like hotmail, gmail and yahoo also do not work. About the only thing that does work is Google and news sites.
However the new Classilla [floodgap.com] browser might have changed all that. I'll have to dig out the iMac and see how it does.
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Re:MacOS 9 (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:MacOS 9 (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife still runs MacOS 9 on an old G3 Gossamer. It does everything she wants and needs. Why upgrade? There are lots of people still using MacOS 9.
I'm pretty sure the original poster for OS9 was not talking about MacOS 9. There's an old OS called OS9 that had nothing to do with Macs. It was one of the rirst real-time multitasking OSes. It's still going strong with hobbists because it's tiny, efficient, and powerful. It was originally developed for the Motorola 6809, which is where it gets it's name.
Verdict: NOT DEAD (OS9 nor MacOS 9)
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Re:MacOS 9 (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:MacOS 9 (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually I have a customer that refuses to let go of his old WinME box he keeps in the back, and for him it is a great little OS. You see, working PC repair I believe I have found what was the big fuckup in WinME. WinME allowed the OEMs to use either the older Vxd drivers, or the new WDM driver model. That was a bad idea of Itanic proportions.
You see my customer got one of the few boxes that the OEM used NOTHING but WDM drivers, and it is solid and pain free. Myself and most others at the time got the fucked up OEM version because MSFT allowed both driver models (you still owe me an apology and a copy of Win2K Bill Gates!) which equaled an unstable mess. If you had a box with ONLY WDM drivers it runs fine, but HP and many others reused their Win9X drivers for the older onboard parts and only provided WDM for newer onboards and cards. This caused driver contentions and all kinds of instability, like how I could set my watch by my WinME box (which I am actually typing this on. With Win2K it has been running for nearly 9 years as a rock solid Netbox) die within 5 minutes of boot every. single. time. even if you didn't actually touch anything. The onboard sound was Vxd, the video WDM and so a crashing we will go.
So don't be surprised that there are plenty of old boxes doing a single job and doing it well. Many are either like the DOS 3 box I built for a lumber mill where they had a CNC controller that wouldn't run on anything else, or like the WinME guy and running an old astronomy program and doing it quite well, or myself and this Win2K Netbox. If it works why toss it out?
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Re:MacOS 9 (Score:5, Funny)
Did you receive the fax about the IE6 users?
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Why is OS/2 mentioned twice in the article? (Score:5, Funny)
Was it THAT good, or is it doubly obsolete? ;)
Re:Why is OS/2 mentioned twice in the article? (Score:5, Funny)
OS/2 is clearly half an OS. So OS/2 + OS/2 = OS.
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Re:Why is OS/2 mentioned twice in the article? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Why is OS/2 mentioned twice in the article? (Score:5, Insightful)
(was so aggresive with putting files in contiguous blocks that a defrag script back then just renamed forth and back all files to do the work)
While this might be a decent idea if the whole system knew about it, introducing it to modern Linux would be a catastrophe at best. Fill an ext3/ext4 up to 50% with typical desktop usage patterns (download-delete-move-copy-edit-etc), turn this feature on, and try to torrent a 4Gb file. You'll have plenty of time to think about the merits of your idea, I promise.
Now, think about all the programs that were written with the knowledge that renames are fast. Go no further: the standard toolchain is more than enough to demonstrate this. Is it absolutely necessary that temporary files, however big, are contiguous?
Now, add in SSD's and realize the whole debate is getting pointless.
In a modern pc, with current memory/clock speeds, if you manage that it work with all the hardware, would fly.
Nope. In a modern PC, we're taught to optimize for development speed. Make it run, make it right, and then make it fast. Which means programs get bloated, and nobody cares because computers can keep up. Note how the choice of OS does not affect this process. This is why it's still considered acceptable for a desktop computer to boot in more than 5 seconds.
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Re:Why is OS/2 mentioned twice in the article? (Score:5, Funny)
Windows in any form has always been a PIG on any machine that didn't have enough memory to run a proper Unix.
This includes Windows 95.
Windows wins no awards in the "slim OS" category. At best, it might have a slight edge (molasses in january vs. amber).
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Re:Why is OS/2 mentioned twice in the article? (Score:5, Informative)
I worked at several computer stores back then and it was the exact opposite actually. Windows 95 would not run very well on a 486 unless you had at least 16MB RAM (where 4 and 8 was the standard back then) especially if you started adding more applications or device drivers. Some 486 processors (IBM's Blue Lightning) actually had issues because they were based on the 386's with added instructions and would BSOD no matter what. A Pentium did actually much better.
OS/2 Warp 4 had some wonderful applications and did very well on both 386 and 486, never crashed (it was more stable than most workstation UNIX back then) and could run Windows' 16-bit programs. The great thing is that IBM kept support around for a long, long time so many banks were running it in their offices even until very recently.
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Re:Why is OS/2 mentioned twice in the article? (Score:5, Insightful)
If by "good" you mean "a lot of advanced features" then you probably would be right. If "good" however includes enough performance to be useful, OS/2 never was a very good OS. Windows 95 would scream (to quote Steve Jobs) on my 486 DX in the day, while OS/2 Warp 3 would present me with an hourglass mouse pointer most of the time.
OS/2 wasn't in the same category as Windows 95 - it was in the same category as Windows NT. OS/2 and Windows NT required much more memory than Windows 9x. Once you got an OS/2 machine up to >= 16Meg of memory, it was just fine.
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Re:Why is OS/2 mentioned twice in the article? (Score:5, Interesting)
NT was substantially more advanced than OS/2. Multiuser, SMP capable, fully 32 bit, almost-a-microkernel, etc.
This is the thing I never quite got. NT4 ran fine in 32 MB of ram, and it made 128 MB of ram seem infinite. And it did in fact multitask very well. I never understood why it was that XP had to be SO much heavier than NT, while still doing essentially the same stuff. I've always had this nagging feeling that the team that built NT4 really knew what they were doing, and that the guys that came after just weren't as good at their game.
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Re:Why is OS/2 mentioned twice in the article? (Score:5, Funny)
At 1920 screen resolution...
Weren't screens made up of a 10x10 array of clay tablets back then?
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ME (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think anyone willingly uses Windows ME for any useful task anymore.
Re:ME (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think anyone willingly uses Windows ME for any useful task anymore.
Were they ever able to? ;)
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Re:ME (Score:5, Funny)
I don't think anyone willingly uses Windows ME for any useful task anymore.
Were they ever able to? ;)
I had a firewall machine with windows ME that had an uptime of over 3 months at one point. I then took it down for fear that breaking the laws of probability like that would cause the universe to fold in on itself.
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Re:ME (Score:4, Funny)
I'm using ME for a useful task - I have it on a PC in the garage that I'm using to prop up a pile of lumber.
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Re:ME (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:ME (Score:5, Funny)
If only the same could be said of the users of said medical computers...
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Re:ME (Score:5, Funny)
It's not all bad, though. When he asked me to install AOL on his computer (under protest, mind you) and get him set up, I set up AOL to use pulse-dialing (think old-school rotary phone) when making its calls. It turns out that, once set, you can't unset that, so, every time he tries to get on to the Internet at home, he has to sit there and wait... "TICK-TICK-TICK-TICK... TICK-TICK-TICK... TICK-TICK-TICK-TICK-TICK..." and so on for about 45 seconds or so. I told him it was my way of getting even.
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Re:ME (Score:5, Funny)
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What about the Abacus? (Score:4, Funny)
The operating systems behind many abacuses have since passed away. May they rest in peace.
Re:What about the Abacus? (Score:4, Informative)
It is a very easy way to visualize numbers when you are trained to use one.
Of Course, they get to the point where they create an imaginary one in there heads,
hence you see them scratching on the table to solve equations.
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Multics (Score:5, Interesting)
Multics (Score:5, Informative)
Multics is officially dead. The last site to be using it went offline almost nine years ago. Multics was open sourced two or three years ago, but I haven't heard of anybody taking advantage of that to try using it again.
Re:Multics (Score:5, Funny)
I've been officially dead before, twice actually. So that's no guarantee it's not around.
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RSX-11, RT-11 and RSTS/E (Score:4, Insightful)
Has there ever been a major OS that simply went away, period?
I think RSX-11 [wikipedia.org], RT-11 [wikipedia.org] and RSTS/E [wikipedia.org] fit that. Some of the PDP operating systems are dead probably because they're still closed source otherwise I'm guessing hobbyists would still be maintaining them.
Re:RSX-11, RT-11 and RSTS/E (Score:5, Interesting)
I make my living supporting RT/RSX/RSTS customers so I can assure you they're alive (the copyrights are now held by Mentec). Hobbyists run them too -- telnet to mim.update.uu.se to see an RSX system. Maintenance -- well yeah they've been stagnant since the Y2K fixes went in, but so are the applications so changes would just break things at this point.
And yes they're closed source as in, you can't just download the source for free, but the source was *available* for a fairly reasonable price (and it's *beautiful*, much more readable than any free stuff I've seen). Dunno what to call that but "closed source" is a little strong -- this isn't Windows by a long shot!
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What has anyone Hird of the Hurd? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it still being developed?
IIRC Linux was supposed to be a temporary stand-in until the Hurd was ready to go.
Re:What has anyone Hird of the Hurd? (Score:5, Informative)
Hurd got to a state where it was actually usable - there was a Debian distro of it, you could run X, you could run various applications, it was *real*. But that version was based on the Mach microkernel. Since then they went down the route of porting to the L4 microkernel (generally considered faster but I suspect YMMV depending on design & implementation of what you run on top of it). That work had some interesting ideas but last rumour I'd heard was that they'd stopped *that* port and that someone was working on a new microkernel that better fit their needs.
Hurd's design had nice features. For instance, it's fundamental to the design that users can replace OS components with their own, so custom userspace filesystems were easily supported. Linux gained this capability through FUSE but Hurd had it baked naturally into the design AFAIK.
I'd be quite interested in playing with Hurd but my main issue is that I don't perceive there being a very cohesive effort around it now, so I wouldn't know how to contribute or whether it would help at all. That might *just* be my perception, however the project has manifestly been "on the way" for a very long time.
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I'm not even angry... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I'm not even angry... (Score:4, Funny)
Nope. Still Alive.
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What about Pick? (Score:5, Interesting)
My father used to be a programmer, and he first told me about Pick [wikipedia.org]. It used a database as the filesystem; it was decades ahead of its' time.
From what Dad said, its' inventor, Dick Pick, was a lot like Tesla, in that he was apparently very sensitive, and didn't want to widely market the system. So as a result, although it was used in a few places, it seems to have largely died on the vine.
The single main reason why that is a shame, is because it may be the only working example we've ever had, of an OS with a true database filesystem. Nobody else, it seems, has really been able to do that to a fully working degree, yes; BeOS maybe, but it's the only other one if so.
Re:What about Pick? (Score:5, Funny)
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I was there man... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, I remember back in the day using BeOS and being completely floored by it, for about ten minutes. Here was a new OS and it was super fast at some of the tasks that made computers really grind to a halt back then. And it was stable. Remember, this was back when we were all rebooting our Windows boxes once a day at least while doing real work. Macs were better for stability, but only let one program do real work at a time. Unix boxes were rock solid, but it was rare to find one that had crazy advanced features like color display. Linux was rock solid to, but it took a smart guy a non-trivial amount of time to get one actually working.
In comparison to the available options it was almost hard to believe. The only real reason not to use it was lack of applications, which is what I realized in short order. A few dozen actually usable programs were about it. Still, if some companies had jumped on it and pre-installed it would have dragged the computing world half a decade or more into the future. Microsoft killed it with threats and legal action against any company who dared dual install it beside Windows or who even wanted to keep selling Windows and sell BeOS too. If ever there was a time for the feds to step in, that was it, but Be was a tiny company and the niche for an alternative vertically integrated system was taken by Apple. That one instance of shady dealing on MS's part crippled OS development and made it clear to everyone there was no point investing in the desktop OS market. If something so obviously superior, already in a stable and running form couldn't compete against MS's hold on vendors, what was the point in wasting money?
Seeing this just makes me angry all over again how corporate greed and crime has held back progress. Screw you early 90's MS execs. I hope you tell your kids how you managed to cripple OS development around the world with your crimes.
Re:Yes, there is (Score:4, Funny)
Noone is using WIndows to do some real job.
Who's Noone, and what's he/she using Windows for? Sounds fairly self-defeating, really; I mean, no one important is using it anymore, so Noone might need a new set of talents soon...
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Re:Yes, there is (Score:4, Funny)
It's Peter Noone, of Herman's Hermits. Like his performing career, it's still chugging along.
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Re:Yes, there is (Score:4, Funny)
s/this afternoon//
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Re:VMS? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:VMS? (Score:5, Informative)
Surely you jest... since
A) VMS is still in active use and development
B) The "Open" in OpenVMS means it is POSIX compliant (and the term open has NOTHING to do with open source. It actually has many software patents)
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Re:Long ago (Score:4, Informative)
They call it "z/OS" now.
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Re:OS newbie (Score:4, Informative)
There are a lot of OSes which predate Unix, as well as many OSes since which have had a different lineage (VMS related stuff, such as Windows).
For the most part, I suspect that the useful applications have predominantly lived on beyond the useful lives of the operating systems. That's typically how things work. The apps have been ported to the new OS, and lived on there. In a sense, the spirit of many older OSes - the good ideas - have lived on vicariously through these apps.
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Re:Atari (Score:5, Funny)
Are you kidding? TOS is still used through-out the computing industry. In fact its normally pretty big news when people make TOS modifications as they are behind some of the biggest pieces of software out there in the world.
What people don't know is that the team behind TOS shifted its emphasis towards specialising in very hard to understand and complicated programmes that were designed to confuse those who read them, like Perl but with longer words. This new coding approach was then adopted by Lawyers everywhere which is why everyone now clearly states they have a "TOS" for their website/software/whatever.
Over beer in 1993 an Atari developer was asked by someone what TOS stood for and jokingly said "Terms of Service". This name stuck, particularly with the lawyers and hence TOS now dominates as the underlying operating system for legal documents.
What most people don't realise is that you can run "Chess Master 2000" on the Supreme Court.
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Re:Win 3.1 (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if you use contemporary hardware. I fired up an old Win95 box a few months ago, and was startled by how much more responsive it was compared to the modern WinXP system I use at work. We've all been given the frog-in-pot-of-water treatment, learning to expect gradually more sluggish UIs.
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Re:Amiga OS is dead (Score:4, Insightful)
The amiga hardware was way ahead of its time and so was the software for that matter. The mac hardware was basically a weak copy of the amiga stuff. Apple basically just stuck with the amiga copy stuff and incremental improvements to it until they switch over to using PC hardware piece by piece. Today a mac is basically just a severely overpriced pc that you have to buy to be able to use a user friendly operating system.
Where Amigas really shined was video editing. It was a very long time indeed before Amiga stopped being the tool of choice for video work. Everything up to the special effects on Babylon 5 were done with Amigas. After commadore died it took apple a long time to catch up with the Amiga.
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Amiga died, and a cynic was born (Score:5, Insightful)
Today, I see the Mac fanbois and Linux zealots, and I harbor scorn and envy. There is no platform that deserves such a pedestal. Not just because the Amiga died, but through it's death I could see the world for the cold place it is. OSes & manufacturers will come and go. Apple will die, and Linux will fade. I know not when, but they will. Yet, I am envious of the fanaticism these people hold. The joy they get from the belief their system is superior to all else. I remember when I had faith in Commodore and wish for those days of old.
Today, I move quietly from machine to machine and hold no special attachment to any OS. They are all the same despite their differences.
Once. A few years ago. There was a brief moment I thought I heard the song of BSD, but I turned around and it was just a wrinkled old harlot clearing her throat.
No, the Amiga died, and so did my passion. I miss my old friend, but there will be no more friends like her. Now we only visit -- in the still of the night -- when I am fast asleep.
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