One Dos based OS dominating countless Unix based OSes? Why?

[general.rule]

I am confused for the fact that there is only one Dos based OS i.e. Windows and there are countless Unix based ones i.e. many Linuxes, BSDs, Solaris and its likes as well as Apple's Mac OSX but still Windows is ruling the worldwide PC desktop OS market and its share is more than 90%. Why is that so? Is Dos a better base than Unix even though Unix is older than Dos? And as far as I have read many sites that Unix is more stable and secure than Dos and Dos is inherently unstable and insecure. It makes me think that all that is just propaganda and Dos is equally or even more secure, stable and effecient than Unix. Am I right? If not please inform me what is the reason behind all this. Thanks

[C.A.T.S. CEO]

They got there 1st, and stupid people like to play follow the leader.

[mellowd]

I am confused for the fact that there is only one Dos based OS i.e. Windows and there are countless Unix based ones i.e. many Linuxes, BSDs, Solaris and its likes as well as Apple's Mac OSX but still Windows is ruling the worldwide PC desktop OS market and its share is more than 90%. Why is that so? Is Dos a better base than Unix even though Unix is older than Dos? And as far as I have read many sites that Unix is more stable and secure than Dos and Dos is inherently unstable and insecure. It makes me think that all that is just propaganda and Dos is equally or even more secure, stable and effecient than Unix. Am I right? If not please inform me what is the reason behind all this. Thanks

DOS?

While 9x may have been dos based there is hardly any dos left at all in future generations of windows.

DOS at the time was pretty good. It did what it was supposed to do. In all my years running DOS way back when I never had it "crash"

[PmDematagoda]

First of all, Dos is not secure as Unix is, the main reason, because it's monolithic and it's focus towards end-users rather than multi-user situations.

And the reason that Windows is so popular right now is only because of the good marketing strategies of Microsoft and the fact that they have more than enough money to spend on countless propaganda about Windows being better than any other OS.

The truth is that Dos-based systems are not really secure and stable as OSes such as Unix or Linux are, if Dos based OSes were better than Unix or Linux, then why are there hundreds of thousands of malware for Windows when there are only about a hundred or less malware for Linux and Unix.

[PmDematagoda]

DOS?

While 9x may have been dos based there is hardly any dos left at all in future generations of windows.

DOS at the time was pretty good. It did what it was supposed to do. In all my years running DOS way back when I never had it "crash"

I am not sure if there is any part of Dos in Windows XP myself since the only thing it has which resembles Dos in anyway is the command-line prompt which in my view point is not as usable as Linux's terminal.

[mellowd]

I am not sure if there is any part of Dos in Windows XP myself since the only thing it has which resembles Dos in anyway is the command-line prompt which in my view point is not as usable as Linux's terminal.

of course not, and it was never meant to be

[madrod]

The only reason why window$ is the most popular O.S is because ms spends lots of money keeping any unix based S.O away from market.
Do you think it is casual that any new device is designed for windows?

[Xbehave]

marketing

[mellowd]

Microsoft are damn good as business. Simple as that.

We may not like the business, but from an investors point of view they have been brilliant.

It shows something about a company who can dominate the world with a sub standard product.

[kopinux]

luck

i dont know about good business, since they are losing a lot of money with zune, hddvd and the xbox.

[nrs]

What propelled it initially? Marketing. I also think another reason for success lies in the topic title.

[gn2]

Excellent


marketing

Combined with a fair bit of


luck

[LowSky]

luck

i dont know about good business, since they are losing a lot of money with zune, hddvd and the xbox.

OK first -- Windows originally sold well because it was cheaper and more effective than the competition (Mac and OS/2)

Second -- It kept that lead by making products that were simple and very stable that companies could use without needing to worry about compatability (ie:MS Office)

Third -- People like compatability and standarization, Most people want to be able to do the same things at home as they can at work.

As for HD-DVD, that seems to be winning the HD multimedia format, because HD-DVD is the cheaper of the two with $100 players now being sold.

As for the Zune -- Trying to compete in a market dominated by Apple (Funny IMHO), and countless other companies like Creative, and Samsung -- how do you sell a product when the competitors have been doing it for years before you with customers who are brand loyal (aka iPods)

As for Xbox -- the First one was basically a sales flop, but the 360 is selling better than the Playstation 3. Again the issue here is Microsoft entered a market crowded by companies that have been making games and or systems for over 20-30 years. Its a good system, but not as fun as the Wii (but seriously if anyone said that a infared remote was going to be the new way to play games 10 years ago, we all would have laughed)

[aaaantoine]

(but seriously if anyone said that a infared remote was going to be the new way to play games 10 years ago, we all would have laughed)

It not only uses infrared, but it also uses Bluetooth-like RF signals to communicate with the system. And if you take into consideration the concept of Virtual Reality (total immersion), what Nintendo has done with the Wii is a rather conservative step towards this ideal.

But I digress from the original topic. Microsoft is where it is today because DOS (and MS-DOS) pre-dates Linux when it comes to personal computers. At the dawn of the PC, UNIX was a server OS and would have required extra effort to port to IBM-compatible computers (hence Linux was made, though a little too late).

I'm no historian, but I speculate that there also wasn't enough demand to port UNIX to PCs. The multi-user interface was a bit much for a single computer and its casual home users ("Why do we all need a separate user account to play King's Quest?"). PCs also were not originally built with multitasking in mind -- as opposed to the servers that ran UNIX -- and they would need to put out more resources to support a multitasking operating system.

[forrestcupp]

DOS?

While 9x may have been dos based there is hardly any dos left at all in future generations of windows.

DOS at the time was pretty good. It did what it was supposed to do. In all my years running DOS way back when I never had it "crash"
True. Windows XP joined the NT line with the home user line which effectively ended DOS forever.


I am not sure if there is any part of Dos in Windows XP myself since the only thing it has which resembles Dos in anyway is the command-line prompt which in my view point is not as usable as Linux's terminal.
That is because it was Windows' goal to allow the user to be able to do everything from the GUI thereby ending the majority of the need for the command prompt. I don't think that's necessarily a bad goal. The only thing I have ever had to use the command prompt for in Windows is ipconfig, and I probably could get the same info from a GUI.

[Xanatos Craven]

I am not sure if there is any part of Dos in Windows XP myself since the only thing it has which resembles Dos in anyway is the command-line prompt which in my view point is not as usable as Linux's terminal.
DOS lives on in the command.com executable and a few old DOS-associated programs scattered in the system directory (edit.com is one of them). What a lot of people, including myself a while back, mistakenly call "DOS" is actually just the 32-bit text console cmd.exe. Not DOS at all, just looks like it and uses similar syntax.

Windows is still #1 because people don't care that Unix is "better" in many ways. They just want whatever works out of the box and is most compatible with all their software and files, so that's what they swallow. I think it's great that we have visual bling, the best music players, etc. at our disposal, but Linux is going to have to surpass Windows in "just working" as well. Which means more/better drivers, more software and whatnot.

[n3tfury]

I am confused for the fact that there is only one Dos based OS i.e. Windows and there are countless Unix based ones i.e. many Linuxes, BSDs, Solaris and its likes as well as Apple's Mac OSX but still Windows is ruling the worldwide PC desktop OS market and its share is more than 90%. Why is that so? Is Dos a better base than Unix even though Unix is older than Dos? And as far as I have read many sites that Unix is more stable and secure than Dos and Dos is inherently unstable and insecure. It makes me think that all that is just propaganda and Dos is equally or even more secure, stable and effecient than Unix. Am I right? If not please inform me what is the reason behind all this. Thanks

marketing and um...strangleholds in the aftermath.

[D-EJ915]

You also have to think of the business ideology during the 90s. Big companies had the "proprietary everything" ideology, they designed the chips, machines, OS, everything. That made it really expensive, plus they were greedy, thus, very expensive to buy/operate. No home user would buy a Unix machine in the 90s, it just didn't make sense.

Microsoft didn't do anything but the OS which ran on already-available and cheaply-available hardware, you didn't need expensive support contracts and you could use software you already had.

Those 2 things really led to Windows becoming the market leader, especially since the "computing boom" occured during this timeframe.

[Depressed Man]

It'd be interesting if we could reset things. Let's say take it as it is now. Freeze it (Windows is frozen as is, Linux as is, OSX as is).

Then have no software being written for any specific form yet. And no existing markets to get funding from or to use as weight. So it'd be a neutral market.

Who would come out on top? Somehow I think OSX wouldn't come up on top (especially since Apple insists on running it on "Apple" hardware). So it'd be between Linux and Windows. Even now Linux is split, so Windows may have the upper hand for actually being unified (as in not so many versions, RPM base vs Deb based).

[koenn]

marketing, 'follow the leader' attitude, etc all have something to do with Microsofts current dominance, but it all started when IBM invented the x86 CPU and Microsoft kindly offered an operating system for it : MS-DOS, then also known as IBM-DOS. There were other OSes around, but they were designed for other hardware : various Unixes ran on various hardware, Mac OS in those days ran on Motorola processors. IBM started producing its personal computers around the x86 processor and bundeled them with IBM-DOS/MS-DOS, Mac competed with the IBM PC's and lost (PC's were cheaper than MACs), and for Unix vendors, the personal computer wasn't interesting, they were running on 'big iron" computers and workstations mainly in universities, scientific research, and telecommunucations (Unix was created at AT&T) - the PC was just an insignificant toy to them.
15 years later, the PC wasn't a toy anymore, and Windows was everywhere.

[Firedorn]

I also think another reason for success lies in the topic title.

QFT

I think another reason this is so is that DOS was there for the end-user, the workstation, the common mortal. Unix was there for the server. As we know, there were and still are more servers than workstations in the world. Starting from that, you gain popularity faster within the masses when you serve the humble commoner.

From there, people like MS and say, "HEY, they have server software, let's try it out". Then it's about not wanting to change and accepting mediocrity for fear of the pain encountered when going through a major change.

I for one love my Windows XP OS, for my own purposes (mainly gaming and web development). But it's more like I have no choice in the matter (as far as gaming goes). As far as servers go, non-MS is the way to go. Once every application is moved to Web or some sort of multi-platform client, people will start moving to more stable OSes, such as Linux for their workstations. We have actually started a migration plan for all our workstations to move to Linux, with only the office productivity software installed. Everything else we use is web based, so there's no need to worry about such things as compatiblity and Win32 executables.

If Microsoft's conglomerate of companies actually spoke to each other, the wouldn't have all the stability issues they have. But alas, the common mass accepts this and moves ahead blindly. All hail lemmings!

[maybeway36]

I dual-boot with FreeDOS. :P

[elctb]

The reason is because Unix/linux and Microsoft have targeted different markets.

Microsoft wanted to put a pc in every home while unix/linux wants to build the best (stable/powerful/secure) system.

That's why there's a pc running microsoft on every home, and technical people use unix/linux.

For linux you have to look at who is writing all the open source code. For the most part they are pretty good programmers that write code for themselves and their peers. They can't care less if it's somewhat technical to use.

[init1]

I am confused for the fact that there is only one Dos based OS i.e. Windows and there are countless Unix based ones i.e. many Linuxes, BSDs, Solaris and its likes as well as Apple's Mac OSX but still Windows is ruling the worldwide PC desktop OS market and its share is more than 90%. Why is that so? Is Dos a better base than Unix even though Unix is older than Dos? And as far as I have read many sites that Unix is more stable and secure than Dos and Dos is inherently unstable and insecure. It makes me think that all that is just propaganda and Dos is equally or even more secure, stable and effecient than Unix. Am I right? If not please inform me what is the reason behind all this. Thanks
There are actually a number of different DOS OS's now. PTS-DOS, FreeDOS, RxDOS, NXDOS, PC-DOS, DR DOS, GeorgOS, and probably others in addition.

[kopinux]

OK first -- Windows originally sold well because it was cheaper and more effective than the competition (Mac and OS/2)

yep, its luck, they got there at the right place and the right time, linux is not just cheaper, its free. gos gos

other software products= like IE and WMP? they got smite by the hammer of justice.

hd-dvd= being outsold by blu-ray 2:1 worldwide, passed total sales long ago.
zune=loss $289m.
xbox=loss $6 billion, even though xbox got a year ahead. outsold by wii and passed total sales, outsold monthly by ps3 worldwide (will pass total sales of xbox in late 2008).

so any other ideas of MS success outside windows? its luck...

[bruce89]

OK first -- Windows originally sold well because it was cheaper and more effective than the competition (Mac and OS/2)

Surely XP + is OS/2 based, not DOS.

[samjh]

Does anybody here have any idea about the history of DOS? Because thus far, this thread doesn't touch DOS's history at all.

DOS didn't become popular purely because of marketing. Nor did it become popular because of luck. There were a number of factors - technical as well as business.

In summary, it became popular because of IBM and Intel's 8088 processor.

IBM tried to use CP/M as its operating system for the then-new IBM PC, which used Intel 8086 and 8088 processors. At the time, CP/M was the most popular operating system for Intel's 8088 architecture computers. However DRI (the makers of CP/M) and IBM couldn't agree upon the use of CP/M.

Microsoft entered the scene. Bill Gates bought QDOS from Tim Paterson (who later worked for Microsoft) from Seattle Computer Products, modified it, and turned it into MS-DOS. Gates needed to modify it because QDOS didn't work on 8088 systems, although QDOS was based on CP/M, it was written for a different processor family than Intel's 8088. (As an aside: CP/M didn't work for 8086 but later worked for 8088, while QDOS worked for 8086 but didn't work for 8088.)

IBM chose MS-DOS over CP/M, and marketed it as PC-DOS. We should all know that the IBM PC pretty much revolutionised the microcomputer industry back then, becoming the dominant force for microcomputers in daily business. As the IBM PC cemented itself in the market, so did PC-DOS, and its parent, MS-DOS.

Using the popularity of PC-DOS and the iBM PC, Microsoft licensed MS-DOS to many computer manufacturers. Eventually Microsoft demanded that they all use MS-DOS as the brand name of the operating system.

The IBM PC and its clones pretty much all used a variant of MS-DOS.

Inspired by Apple's use of graphical user interfaces, Microsoft developed Windows as a "shell" over DOS (a bit like how Gnome and KDE sit on top of the Linux kernel, but at a more abstract level). Due to the market share already established by MS-DOS, and the myriad of application software available for it, Windows caught on quickly.

The fact is, Unix and its clones never really competed on the microcomputer market. Unix was all over mainframes, but didn't establish a presence on PCs.

Apple failed to secure a big market share with Macintosh, because ALL of Apple's hardware and software were completely proprietary and they refused to license it anyone else. By contrast, IBM licensed its IBM PC so that other manufacturers could produce it and make components for it, bringing in more competition, lower prices, and increasing market share.

So at the end of the day, it was the IBM PC which gave Microsoft the boost. Gates played the smart hand by buying off QDOS and giving IBM what they wanted: a CP/M-based operating system that worked with Intel's 8088 processor.

[20thCenturyBoy]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but...

...wasn't it Linux that went the monolithic kernel way while Microsoft opted for a micro kernel. I thought XP ended up being based on some combination of the two...

[yatt]

During the 80's the computer industry was in the middle of the Unix wars. All the Unixes of the time were very proprietary and all competing for the same market. Embrace-Extend-Extinguish was a prevailing technique to gain market share (although, it was rather lite on the Extinguish). Unixes all became incompatible with each other, and stagnation hit the Unix world.

It was about this time that the IBM Personal Computer was released. It was really one of the first computers cheap enough for mere mortals to afford. This was due to the fact that IBM was more interested in selling licences for the specifications than building the things. This created a heap of competition which pushed prices down and performance up. They all came with the MS-DOS. As PC's took over, Microsoft was carried with them.

Porting Unix to the Personal Computer was rather low priority. The PC lacked a Memory Management Unit, which Unix requires. A PC port of Unix would require a MMU to be emulated in software, which would be a difficult and resource heavy task. Unix companies also did not think enough of the PC to think it was going to last either. It was horribly under-powered and they had other things to deal with.

Come the (very) early 90s and GNU had pretty much an entire OS except a kernel (the most important bit). Hurd was never making it anywhere. Someone had ported BSD to the PC, but there was a significant legal battle which prevented developers from getting involved. Then Linux was born, and there was finally a good Unix-like system available for the common PC.

tl;dr Unix ignored the most prevalent hardware architecture ever available. As a result, it has had to play catch up with MS after marginalizing itself and having to start anew.

stl;dr Unix did all it could in the 80s to screw itself for the 90s.

[frup]

If i am correct,

IBM didn't believe the PC market was going to do much and that is why they licensed the PC and made the IBM-compatible market. Because they didn't think it was a huge market, rather than build an OS in house, they out sourced to Microsoft. With the success of the PC they decided to make OS/2 which was intended to be THE personal/business computing OS.

Microsoft had the tenacity to release windows 3.1 while developing OS/2 with IBM as a way for people to "learn" how to use OS/2. Microsoft then went ahead and continued developing windows and stopped working on OS/2. From that spawned the NT project.

Until NT Microsoft had also toyed with Unix with their Xenix line which was later sold to SCO, which was then sold to a different SCO who we all hate. In the beginning NT was a terrible server OS and more of a workstation (The internet hadn't really happened yet and gates really misjudged the internet)
With the success of Windows Microsoft as company began to really expand. Later with the acquisition of services such as Hotmail NT still wasn't great. For a long time Hotmail remained on BSD servers because NT just couldn't handle.

Microsoft with it's licensing grew fast and strong and heavied (E.E.E) on many other companies. IBM, probably very sour from the break down of OS/2 then began to head towards it's Unix roots after a what I guess was a bit of a corporate reshuffle. This is how they began to back Linux.

As far as one DOS based OS dominating countless Unix OS's, this is the story as I see it now.

Desktop Linux is sitting at around 2% with various online counters.
Mac OS (intel) is sitting just below 5% as is Vista. Mac OS is marginally ahead of Vista.
There is still a substantial proportion of people (especially businesses) using pre XP windows. Vista is mostly stagnant. According to sites like netcraft, Apache is dominating ISS 50:37. This suggests that close to half of web servers maybe running Linux or Unix. In my opinion this would put total linux market share above Mac OS. (especially when you consider embedded devices too)

The future presents itself as follows. If Microsoft can not release windows 7 in a way that is liked by users, they are going to fall very, very hard. I have read they are pushing for a 2009 release... personally I think that is stupid. In my opinion they should begin releasing every 5 years and really push the image of windows being more stable and improve it's speed. Instead of spending time developing useless pseudo innovations they should spend more time focusing on windows updates.

If Microsoft fall hard (I think it is unrealistic to think that they will ever go below 60% market share within the next 5-8 years) it will be interesting to see what they can do. While the idea of MS adopting a Mac style port of Windows to a BSD or Linux core has been touted I doubt this will happen. I name it as being pride and prejudice. If that ever does happen. MS for all they stand for, have failed.

As has been said many times the best thing Apple could do for it's self is license it's OS out. They could probably embrace extend and extinguish the PC market quite easily. If they got dell or someone on board, produced 3-4 models of PC-Macs for a 5 years contract their market share would swell phenomenally and then if they were as they seem to be to me they could stop making the PC version as good and continue along the lines of how true macs just are better than PC.

For Linux, gaining market share is a lot harder I think. People seem to say it is games and multiple distro's or terminal. I don't agree with that. I would say it's nearly 80% political. The way Linux is made is just too different for many to accept. Some people argue that the important thing is to soften the FSF message which comes with Linux down so Linux can increase it's market share, appear more business friendly. I completely disagree. Linux does not need to worry about market share, that is the beauty of Linux. Those who come will come. What Linux needs is to fight for open-ness. Fight against DRM, vendor lock in schemes such as Trusted computing and try to get as many hardware specifications opened as possible. The only reason market share is really good is it makes it easier for the voice to be heard.

If Open Source is the future software houses will change radically. They will either be contract based where say a movie studio pays for the development of Blender (or recruits programmers in house) The cable company pays for the driver/app development alongside the hardware manufacturer for their Myth TV boxes etc. etc.

Human society is based on the collaborative nature of human history and innovation. Open Source is merely porting that to Operating Systems. FOSS is returning equilibrium to IT which has always been found in the real world.
With out FOSS, Windows 7 will be Windows Vista with a new GUI and more DRM.

Linux is getting better and better and it's open nature will eventually make it quite hard to beat down. Eventually proprietary shops will find it very difficult to compete with FOSS. IE and Firefox are a good example. IE 7 is relatively new for IE standards... Firefox 3 is out soon and after that Firefox 4 will no doubt be out before IE 8. Firefox 3 is merely what Firefox 2 should have been, from what I have read Firefox 4 will be mazing (as gecko etc will be very much cleaned up and it will be based on Mozilla 2)

I think I should stop my rant... I just realised what I was doing lol.

[Mateo]

Microsoft are damn good as business. Simple as that.

Were good at business. They're latest 2 big projects, Vista and Zune, have ben unmitigated disasters. Such a disaster, in fact, that Vista might be to Microsoft what E.T. was to Atari.

[Flying caveman]

Just because you can get a McDonalds hambuger anywhere doesn't make it taste better.

[Ocxic]

just wait until 64-bit hardware takes hold, and people find out that they can't use there older hardware, since Microsoft will not be able to supply drivers for such..not to mention the fact that the current 64-bit version of widows is pretty crappy, testiment to this would be the lack of selling / promoting such a version of the OS

[tehkain]

Also lets not forget how security flaws make for good business, not for microsoft but for many others. Look at the antivirus industry. While no security is invurnerable our model is worlds better at its lowest(lets say a system without SELinux or AppArmor) then windows.

So if by chance a unix-like OS with a decent security model became dominant what happens to all those who have built an industry around Home PC Virus protection. It would not be nearly as fruitful in that environment since companies like Canonical and Apple would distribute their own security system and thus filling the markets need even more.

There are alot of companies that need for windows and its flaws to thrive so the market can fill the need. Companies have noticed this from the start. I guess people rather make 400 products to do the exact same thing then be creative :(

[inversekinetix]

[QUOTE=LowSky;3854784]


As for HD-DVD, that seems to be winning the HD multimedia format, because HD-DVD is the cheaper of the two with $100 players now being sold.

QUOTE]

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/11/27/euro_bd_hddvd_sales_stats/

[linuxlizard]

OK history lesson from someone who lived through it.

In the late 80s, I remember arguing with a guy in my high school basic programming class about amiga vs ibm. Now that may not sound relevant but hang in here with me a second.

The commodore amiga had over 4000 colors, stereo synthesis sound, voice synthesizer, true multitasking, and a "windows" sort of environment called workbench, and a mouse.

The ibm had beeps from the case speaker (like the sound that beeps when you boot most computers today) one color (green), no multitasking, no mouse, no windows- it had DOS.

The argument was about how the IBM was a "serious" computer- the sort that could be used for professionals and business, the amiga, on the other hand, was a declared a "game console" and not up to a serious work environment.

And that, my friends, is exactly the perception of the masses in the business and acedemic world at that time. Amiga wasn't taken seriously. The irony of course is that amiga had basically what we have in our modern computers today- all the ingredients were there. But the marketing was terrible, and IBM was the name of the game in the business world, and high schools, colleges, and home users wanted to have at home what was in the office so it was both compatible and the skills learned were relevant in the real world.

IBM had one other thing- it didn't protect it's hardware like the other computer manufacturers including amiga at that time. Soon IBM compatibles were everywhere and were cheap and Amiga and most of the others except apple were out of business.

These compatibles ran DOS, then windows. The rest is history. Without competition (other than apple which was fun, but not taken seriously in business) soon DOS and windows were everywhere. And I looked back at that argument with my friend and laughed as we were both right- IBM's machine concept did win out in the end, but not until it had transformed into something like the Amiga's ugly twin brother.

If the world had gone according to heaven's plan, we'd all be running workbench on our super slick amigas, 10 years ahead of what we've got now (that's about how many years amiga was ahead of it's competition).

:guitar:

[toupeiro]

Ok, I lived through it too .. and I will spare you the history lesson and summarize it with two broad facts.

1) DOS is emulated/virtualized (using virtual in a loose sense) in a modern windows kernel. (its impossible to have a 16 bit protected mode Operating system in a 32-bit protected mode operating system) There is no MS-DOS anymore. WinME was the last variant of the DOS rooted versions of windows.

2) DOS was never better than UNIX. Don't get me wrong, I was a big fan of MS-DOS, but knowing DOS as well as I do and UNIX, calling it better is incorrect. DOS was never a multi-user centric OS and um.. neither was Amiga Workbench. The Amiga A500, which I still own, was not considered a gaming computer, it was a media content computer, comparable to the marketshare Apple occupies today. In fact, some of the titanic's (the movie) computer graphics were done on an Amiga 4000T, one of the last times these systems saw prime time production use in the IBM'PC/ PowerPC MAC era. DOS was just on consumer hardware first, thus had more consumer exposure and momentum in the personal computing market and 'budget oriented' business computing model.