# How many operating systems have you had to learn (and forget)? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 25, 2004, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-operating-systems-have-you-had-to-learn-and-forget/270979 "2004-10-25T02:22:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Early\_Out](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Early\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Early_Out)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2004, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-operating-systems-have-you-had-to-learn-and-forget/270979/21 "2004-10-25T12:12:44Z")
> [@vunderbob](#): > > I can claim RSX-11 M **and** S, as well as RSTS and VMS. There’s also OS/9 and pSOS feathers in my cap Oh, I like it! Then you’ll understand my reference to PIP (Peripheral Interchange Program, IIRC), the Swiss Army Knife of commands. You used it to copy files, delete them, create them, list them, concatenate them, etc., as well as to create/delete directories, initialize volumes, format disks, send data to a terminal, send a file to a printer, and on and on. Someone once suggested some useful extensions to the command, like: \>PIP /INSTALL=RSX11M ---
**Author:** ![Metacom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecae2f/32.png) [@Metacom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Metacom)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2004, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-operating-systems-have-you-had-to-learn-and-forget/270979/22 "2004-10-25T12:54:35Z")
[ul] [li]Genera (Symbolic’s Lisp Machine OS)[/li][li]VMS[/li][li]Solaris[/li][li]AIX[/li][li]Irix[/li][li]FreeBSD and OpenBSD[/li][li]Older versions of MacOS (when it was still on 68k’s)[/li][li]Assorted Linux distros[/li][li]Assorted Microsoft OS’s[/li][/ul] ---
**Author:** ![Dragwyr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dragwyr/32/2855_2.png) [@Dragwyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dragwyr)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2004, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-operating-systems-have-you-had-to-learn-and-forget/270979/23 "2004-10-25T16:11:32Z")
In the order I was exposed to them: Timex Sincliar 1000 Apple IIe Commodore 64 Tandy TRS-80 MS-DOS 2.0 MS-DOS 3.2 MS-DOS 4.0 MS-DOS 5.0 MS-DOS 6.x Windows 3.1 (If you can call it an OS) VAX-VMS Windows 95 Palm OS 3 Windows 98 Windows NT 4.0 Palm OS 5 Windows 2000 Server Windows XP Windows CE Windows Server 2003 Red Hat Linux 7 HP-UX Does it really count if you already knew the previous version of the OS? I knew MS-DOS 2.0 very well when version 3 came out and there was next to no learn curve. There was a bit of a learning curve when I had to learn Windows NT 4 though, mainly for the administrative and networking options. ---
**Author:** ![Balduran](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/cc9497/32.png) [@Balduran](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balduran)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2004, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-operating-systems-have-you-had-to-learn-and-forget/270979/24 "2004-10-25T16:21:29Z")
> [@Bill H.](#): > > Many of the above: tons of varients of CP/M, MS-DOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD. > > But also of interest, I wrote my own Forth kernel on my TRS-80 way back, and used it again as a replacement for CP/M on a Z80 machine (Kaypro). So, for a year or two there, I used pretty much exclusively an OS of my own construction, written completely from scratch. **Bill** , I think you deserve this [certificate](http://www.bbc.co.uk/lancashire/fun_stuff/certificates/nerd.gif) ---
**Author:** ![Early\_Out](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Early\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Early_Out)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2004, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-operating-systems-have-you-had-to-learn-and-forget/270979/25 "2004-10-25T16:56:10Z")
> [@Dragwyr](#): > > Windows 3.1 (If you can call it an OS) Good call - I’ve always thought of Win 3.1 as an application. ---
**Author:** ![Padeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@Padeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Padeye)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2004, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-operating-systems-have-you-had-to-learn-and-forget/270979/26 "2004-10-25T17:05:11Z")
Versions are splitting hairs IMO so I won’t use it to pad my resume: CP/M (Apple language cards and Kaypro) Apple DOS whatever they were using on MACs before color. PC/MS-DOS 2.11 and up inclusing proprietary flavors for Sanyo DR-DOS Windows\* 2.0 to present OS/2 HP-UX Solaris/SunOS MPE (proprietary HP) Currently spending most of my time with MP-RAS (NCR’s flavor of Unix SvR4 for massively parallel clusters) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-operating-systems-have-you-had-to-learn-and-forget/270979.md?page=1)