I am trying to put together some history of operating systems for a lecture I am giving. Given to people learning computers so I have to keep it simple
Besides Windows (and it’s steps Windows 95, 98, ME NT etc etc) and Mac (OS9, OS10) was there ever system developed for a general use (such as Windows and Mac) that didn’t make it? Linux is somewhat user friendly if you get a shell so I am already going to include that.
For the most part UNIX (which from my experience will easily allow you to do major damage) and DOS are way to unfriendly for the average joe. And I doubt computers could have taken off the way they have if you had to use them.
So basically I am looking for info on any “user friendly” OS (like Mac and Windows) that failed to make it. From anytime 1970 onwards let say.
The BBC Micro/Acorn OS’s were pretty similar; a bit like DOS, you typed a command prompt (either RUN"programname" or CHAIN*programname). I don’t know if they had names; they were essentially extensions of BASIC, in which pretty much everything was written by then, and this was back in the days when you could still read the source code of a program (without hacking anything).
I don’t know if OS/2 (Warp!) was intended for mainstream use. I remember seeing the commercials on TV, but it never really took off. I’d say it was around the mid-90s.
British dopers might be able to tell you about RISC OS.
What about OS/2? BeOS?
I’m waiting for the inevitable “Amiga OS is still alive!” or “RISC OS is still used in some schools in Wexhamptonderbyshire-on-the-Cockfosters” comments.
IBM OS/2 was definitely intended for mainstream use. Windows 95, when it came out later, was a direct competition with similar features and performance. “Warp” was an internal working name for one of the later versions of OS/2 (Version 4, IIRC) which they later made official.
There’s also BeOS. Originally an entirely new system (hardware and software), later ported to the x86 architecture, but now dead.
I think MS-DOS + Windows 3.1 count as a “user friendly” operating system too, depending on the definition of “user friendly”. There were other graphical shells available for MS-DOS, like DesqView and DesqView X. There was one other that I can’t remember - Geo, perhaps?
Well, OS2 is an obvious one. I’ve used a couple of other OSs on ancient hardware, but they weren’t exactly meant to be market dominators, just something to make the box do tricks. The 80s were full of DOS clones (Dr-DOS comes to mind)…
Here’s a link to a foreword Bill Gates gave in “Inside OS/2” that’s kind of out-of place…
I’m wouldn’t dis UNIX so much… it’s the base for Macs now obviously, and it’s likely due to those focusing on the big iron not realizing that 1000 x $5000 wasn’t as good as 1,000,000 x $50 that MS-DOS had such a start.
If it’s a history of user-friendly stuff you want though, I’d start with AppleDOS and go from there.
There was a Mac OS-like interface for the Apple IIgs.
I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss DOS, really. It might look archaic now, but average people didn’t just start using computers when Windows was release. Millions of people got by with DOS, WordPerfect, and 1-2-3 before PCs had mice or graphics.
There was a unix derivative (I think) for the NeXT machines. I’ve heard but someone who knows should be consulted whether the NeXT o/s became the basis for the latest apple o/s?
The hardware wasn’t really new; the BeBox prototypes used AT&T Hobbit processors before switching to PowerPC 604 processors and otherwise standard PC components, very similar to the PowerPC Macintoshes of the day. The OS was later ported to x86, but Be didn’t actually build any x86 boxes for it.
The NeXT is a good example of a rather odd graphical computer system that really didn’t do much of anything in the real world but was cool as hell. Steve Jobs made it after he left Apple in a snit, later to return and lead Apple out of its funk and into the next step of computing (which, not incidentally, resembled NeXTStep (the GUI of NeXT) in fundamental ways ;)).
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About UNIX making it too easy to screw yourself over: You could say the same about Windows and it would be more true. To fully fuck up in UNIX, you need to become root. To fuck up in Windows, it is merely required that you turn the machine on and start clicking.
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About Linux: It was a research project done by one Linus Torvalds, then a Finnish graduate student. For a little while, it was head-to-head with Minix, another UNIX clone for x86 machines created by Andrew Tanenbaum, a professor who used it as a teaching aid. Linux chose a different path from Minix and Tanenbaum and Torvalds exchanged words in a debate that has become a classic and is archived by O’Reilly, the publishing house, here. (Sadly, the debate will probably be too esoteric for a nontechnical audience.)
I really wish BeOS would have made it…it was a really nice, fast, stable OS that was pretty user friendly and had UNIX power. I dual booted it with Windows for a short while.
MS-DOS was certainly “intended” for mainstream use, and it would be a stretch to call it a failure, at least in terms of sales. Several versions also included Microsoft’s own DOSShell, which I believe was withdrawn after DOS 6.0 in favor of the infant Windows GUI. And, to pick a nit, “MS-DOS + Windows 3.1” is actually a combination of an OS and a GUI.
I think you may be recalling GEOS, which I believe was put out by Berkley Softworks. (I think it stood for Graphics Environment Operating System.) I used to have a version written for the Commodore 8-bit machines. As I remember it, GEOS was very similar to the original Mac GUI. On a basic C64, GEOS wouldn’t even run; with my C128, it would load, but it occupied every bit of RAM available and was thus useless. External RAM expansions were available, but I won’t get into that… Now, booting that 128 in CP/M mode was pretty cool!
