water cooler :: OS chart dealie

Quote (noclobber @ Feb. 12 2005,22:24)

Don't forget Windows 3.1 and NT 3.51  *cough*, *cough*. Seriously, though, NT 3.51 is supposedly more stable than any other version of Windows.  Less in it to break, I presume. and I'm not sure I'd even bother putting MenuetOS on this list yet.

I was only listing the operating systems I've used...I didn't touch a puter between DOS and Windows 95.
I've used Menuet a little, so I put it in the list =o)

Quote (SaidinUnleashed @ Feb. 13 2005,12:38)

No, NT 3.xx is more stable because it's 60% Unix. It is what came out of M$ and IBM's agreement to produce OS/2 (which M$ screwed IBM and pulled out of).

Yeah, that sounds about right.  I seem to recall now that it was sometime around the early '90s that M$ and IBM parted company over the future of OS/2.

The main reason I brought up NT 3.51 here is that it actually is still a useable OS on old/tiny/slow PCs as long as you don't mind running old software w/o multimedia bells & whistles.  It's half the size of Win 95, more stable and secure, and once it's booted up, you don't hear any of the hard drive accessing that you do with Win 95 ad nauseum (hmmm, kinda like DSL, now that I think about it).  My dad also used NT 3.51 at work before he retired.  They weren't on the 'net back then, but I remember that his most frequent complaint regarded users bringing in virus-infected games on floppies.  Quite often the network was down because it had been "stoned" or some such nonsense.

All this talk of BSD got me to cleaning out my pile of old computer catalogs.  At the bottom was a Walnut Creek CD-ROM one from early 1996.  Mostly FreeBSD software with some OS/2 stuff thrown in.  No mention of M$ at all.

I guess Windows 95 was designed to look and feel like "Macintosh '84" (remember Apple's lawsuit?).  When Linus said, "I could write a better operating system than this," back in 1991, I wonder if he had ever used a Mac prior to deciding to create Linux?  Back then, PCs were pretty much limited to OS/2, Windows 3.x, and DOS, all of whose UIs left much to be desired.