Favorite non-Linux/Mac/Windows OS

[afroman10496]

Mine is MINIX. Your's?

[dragos240]

Free-BSD

[Barrucadu]

Hurd :D

Not to use, to play with. Using it as your main OS would be pretty painful…

[chrisjsmith]

RISC OS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC_OS

[new_tolinux]

Dos.

[donkyhotay]

Don't really use anything else myself, I've played around with reactOS out of curiosity/boredom so technically it gets my vote but of course I wouldn't actually *use* it for anything practical. Although I've never used it, I've been somewhat interested in trying out one of the BSD's and would probably try them if something (impossibly) ever happened to linux.

[CrimsonBizarre]

FreeBSD, or Android for phone.

[Austin25]

FreeBSD, or Android for phone.
I thought Android was based on Linux?
Anyways, does the Arduino boot-loader count?

[Penguin Guy]

I haven't used all of the below operating systems so this is partly guesswork, but I'd say this is my order of preference for a desktop OS:


Linux
Mac
Haiku - never used
BSD - never used
Windows
Hurd - never used
Chromium - not really a desktop OS

[Bachstelze]

OpenBSD

[jetsam]

I'm in a similar situation of mostly gawking at the alternatives and not installing them.

I really like the concept behind Hurd; as I understand it, essentially everything becomes a server, and the OS just passes messages between server-services. I'm not sure what state it's in; they're infamously hung up in development.

Haiku and ReactOS remain perpetually in my "would like to explore" list.

FreeBSD I need to install some day, just to get it working. I've tried installing it several times in years past, but it was so long ago, I never could get X working.

Top of the list: Haiku, even though I've never used it. They seem pretty far along in getting towards a usable desktop experience, and I think it has some very interesting features going for it. I want to play with the integrated filesystem/database stuff. It seems like it could be a way forward.

[aphatak]

Still have fond memories of DOS VSE on mainframes. Not exactly a desktop OS, but I didn't have a desktop computer then - all I had was a terminal. However, this was one OS that NEVER ate my files, and stopped me from being stupid and killing important data. Not friendly, but tough!

[squilookle]

RISC OS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC_OS

+1.

Ahh, first GUI I ever used, back in the day.

[dragos240]

I haven't used all of the below operating systems so this is partly guesswork, but I'd say this is my order of preference for a desktop OS:


Linux
Mac
Haiku - never used
BSD - never used
Windows
Hurd - never used
Chromium - not really a desktop OS



Chromium is based on linux.

[kaldor]

OpenSolaris
*BSD

[jerenept]

OpenSolaris
*BSD

I've used opensolaris, it is pretty good (gnome DE)

[RagingAura]

BSD, similar to Linux.

[Bachstelze]

BSD, similar to Linux.

No more thn any other Unix-like OS.

[Swagman]

AmigaOS
AROS
CP/M

[tjwoosta]

I haven't used all of the below operating systems so this is partly guesswork, but I'd say this is my order of preference for a desktop OS:


Linux
Mac
Haiku - never used
BSD - never used
Windows
Hurd - never used
Chromium - not really a desktop OS



I have tried all of the above and more ;)
My list goes something like this..


Linux
Mac
* BSD
Windows
Open Solaris
Haiku
Minix
ReactOS
Inferno
Plan9


Chromium is just linux, Hurd is useless.

[cloyd]

From back in the dark ages, but it got lots of performance out of not much machine. GEOS.

I'd hate to have to go back to that OS or that machine, but GEOS made it work for me when a little Commodore was all I had.

[mamamia88]

question for all those who have used any of the bsds. does using linux software on bsd have any performance hits?

[Dustin2128]

PC-BSD, the ubuntu of the BSD world.

[chessnerd]

If I had to go with something other than Linux or Windows, I'd probably go with a BSD - likely FreeBSD. I would rank that third in my list after Linux and Windows.

Also, as said so many times before on this forum - technically, Linux is not an operating system, it is a system kernel.

On that note, here are my top 5 operating system kernels:

1. Linux
2. Windows NT
3. BSD
4. Windows DOS/9x
5. MINIX - (never used it, but it helped give us Linux...)

[RiceMonster]

FreeBSD

[Primefalcon]

I'd probally go freebsd or try haiku

btw ChromeOS and Android are both Linux, they use the Linux kernal

[vegetarianshrimp]

Haiku

[Stancel]

OpenSolaris