What operating systems you've tried (or ran) besides Windows, macOS and Linux?

I thought this was an interesting question. So I start with this:
 

I tried all of the 4 main BSDs (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and DragonFly BSD; you will find some PRs I made to make GZDoom compile and run on the latter two). FreeBSD is the best of all the BSDs (although the lack of Realtek USB WiFi modules on USB3.0 was a disappointment). DragonFly BSD prob. comes second. OpenBSD is third and NetBSD is, uh, 4th I guess. All of them are good however.

I tried MS-DOS too. Although I am more interested in other OSs (preferably obscure ones).

DR-DOS was my first OS. I think it became Novell DOS later, before disappearing. The I had MS DOS 6.2, Win95, 98, a few old Linux distros (RedHat, Mandrake), Win XP, another couple of Linux distros (Gentoo and... I forgot the name of the other), Vista, 7.

I did try BeOS when it became free, but since I had zero applications that run on it other than those provided with the system, it was just a novelty thing, forgotten about after one afternoon.

I've tried touching macOS and Ubuntu a few times, Ubuntu actually came pre-installed with my current PC, no idea what version that was though.

It seemed interesting, but I didn't use it for anything other than browsing the internet during its short lived period of time. The programs I need are not available there anyway, and I couldn't really find my way through it. Besides, I don't have another 20 years to learn an OS at an acceptable level for daily use... Trial and erroring, breaking the OS to pieces trying to do a damn thing - or doing something stupid -, no. But it still tempts me, so maybe one day I'll use something else other than Windows, but that day has not come yet.

macOS I've tried on a few friends' laptops who owned one, and I liked it more than Linux/Ubuntu, seemed quite a bit easier to use. It also looked quite nice. But yeah, Apple, so good for rich people maybe, not peasants like me. I'm never going to buy Apple products as a result, even if I'd like to, can't afford that shit. So, I'm mostly a Windows guy as a result, I've been through most of them after all. 95, 98, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, and 10 starting with version 1607. ME and 2000 I've not used extensively - 3.1 not at all -, not more than just simply going through them on a few occasions in various places.

• MS-DOS (duh)
• MenuETOS
• Haiku
• Colibri
• Aura i believe it was called... a very fancy graphical shell for DOS
• ReactOS

Windows ME was my dreaded jam back in 2000.

Besides windows, macOS and Linux..... ummm nothing.

Started with win95.

Win98

Win98se

Win2000

XP

win7

win8

win10

Only time I used Linux, I burned a copy of Knoppix on a CD and used that to access a failing drive that windows couldn't read anymore. Had to put it in the freezer first, all freezer bagged and wrapped up to avoid moisture. Good times.

I started with C64, then Atari ST, then various MS-DOS and DR-DOS versions, then Windows 3.1 at work. After that the usual suspects:

Windows 95, 98, ME (worst mistake ever to install this), XP, Vista, 7, 8.1.

At work I use macOS 10.14 and Ubuntu in a VM, but that's it.

About the impression of non Windows OSs, Ubuntu is just "what can I do with that?" Browsing the web? Check. Using LibreOffice for office documents? Check. Beyond that: ???

macOS is at least something one can work with, but I am sorely missing some tools I take for granted on Windows and if something is missing, it's often right around the corner in the App Store - for $$$ of course. Even for stuff that's free on Windows. No such luck on Mac, here everything has its price. Which essentially means that if I want to set it up to work reasonably close to Windows I'd be short of €2000. Which is simply too expensive for a mediocre, slightly underpowered laptop that'd cost a quarter of that if it was a Windows machine. So, sorry, Apple, I'd rather spend my money on things that are more useful.

i used dos once in a virtual machine

14 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

macOS is at least something one can work with, but I am sorely missing some tools I take for granted on Windows and if something is missing, it's often right around the corner in the App Store - for $$$ of course. Even for stuff that's free on Windows. No such luck on Mac, here everything has its price. Which essentially means that if I want to set it up to work reasonably close to Windows I'd be short of €2000. Which is simply too expensive for a mediocre, slightly underpowered laptop that'd cost a quarter of that if it was a Windows machine. So, sorry, Apple, I'd rather spend my money on things that are more useful.

I will never understand why some willingly invest so much into Mac, considering the prices. I've recently browsed some stores in my country to make some comparisons with Windows compatible PCs and... wow. Something that is a lot more expensive than a high end PC is... way weaker... just what is going on in Apple's minds - apart from "lol we' re going to get away with it anyway".

14 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

Ubuntu is just "what can I do with that?" Browsing the web? Check. Using LibreOffice for office documents? Check. Beyond that: ???

A lot actually, I think. The issue here is that it is pretty much a hobbyist OS, and in order to get the most out of it, you're gonna have to turn it into your hobby. At my current slightly above average level, it sure doesn't have much use to me. I'll get lost in the Terminal immediately once I will need to conjure it for... something, which will be sooner rather than later I'd wager, especially for more advanced stuff. Then revert to the good ol' OS illiterate habits and format the drive because I broke the OS in the process. Nice.

Around mid 90s we had OS/2 on our PC. Eventually we moved to Windows 95.

I remember when I saw Windows 95 for the first time, I was very impressed by the cross button in application's top-right corner that could close the application in just one click! Wow! Closing applications was not so straightforward in OS/2. Also, Heretic (which I had before Doom) wouldn't run under OS/2, I had to boot into DOS and run it from there. How annoying.

On the other side, Windows was less stable and crashing quite often.

I started with MS-DOS (a lot of versions of it and DOSBOX emulated later), had Win 3.1, 95, 98, XP, ME (oh gods, the atrocity!), 2000 (oh gods, the atrocity again!) and then Vista, 7, 8 and 10. 

But in my personal computer it has been Linux for years, passed through Ubuntu (and variations thereof, like Xubuntu, Communix [freely distributed ubuntu skin from the portuguese communist party XD], etc), but ended up settling with Mint (because it's light without being too light)

Other than that.. only if you count RetroPIE or the cellphone's android. And Z/OS for work but it's not really an OS. 

MS-DOS by itself - no, so it's Win98 all the way to Win10 to me. I tried a few Linux distros like Debian, Ubuntu and Mint, but it looks like I won't be using it unless some dire circumstances come along, like if Win10 one day goes nuclear on everything remotely legacy.

8 hours ago, kalaeth said:

2000

2000 was bad? That would be news to me, I recall it being one of the better Windows iterations. Also not calling Vista shit? How dare you.

22 hours ago, Hisymak said:

I remember when I saw Windows 95 for the first time, I was very impressed by the cross button in application's top-right corner that could close the application in just one click! Wow!

One thing I miss from my first Linux experience was the KDE shortcut to turn the cursor into a skull and then send a kill signal to the next window you click on.

With Windows it's summoning the task manager with Shift-Ctrl-Esc and then finding the application and terminating it from there.

I've tried so many I can't even remember them all. Alot of "hobbyist" OS's and such. I love Linux/GNU variants. Ubuntu 10.10 was first foray into Linux. I'm comfortable with a CLI/Shell. I'm into programming and Computer Science all which came about because of loving video games and wanting to create them. 

Most of the time I run them in Virtual Box when checking them out...

Haiku

BeOS

ReactOS

and a ton of other hobbyist OS's

There's a site dedicated to OS development and they have a forum where people share their OS's they are working on. Interesting if you're into programming and comp science or OS's in general...

https://forum.osdev.org/

On 6/23/2020 at 4:01 PM, Redneckerz said:

• MS-DOS (duh)
• MenuETOS
• Haiku
• Colibri
• Aura i believe it was called... a very fancy graphical shell for DOS
• ReactOS

Windows ME was my dreaded jam back in 2000.

Did you manage to do anything with Menuet/Kolibri? I tried Kolibri a few times but never managed to get wifi working and that stalled me out. I'm fascinated by the prospect of a pure asm operating system, but I guess Kolibri's development arc is a pretty strong argument for high-level languages.

I was a DOS kid, and as Windows became more insulting and bloated over the years, I stopped liking computers. I didn't even have one from maybe 2009-2011. I took the leap to Linux about 4 years ago. I stick with the Debian family for software support, and the leanest variant I can find is Lubuntu. I love it. But, then, I'm not a Gamer. Things like Steam can be a headache, and occasionally something won't work in Wine.

I check up on GNU Hurd every once in a while. Some day.

I'm watching and waiting for a viable libre alternative to Android, because I'm sick of Google and it's only getting worse.

GEOS, Amiga OS4, FreeDOS, CP/M... I don't know if IBM PC-DOS counts because it was basically identical to MS-DOS.

I "tried" OS/2 Warp for about ten minutes. It did not go well. The overall best experience was OS4 despite it being a massive pain in the ass to get running on my old PowerPC Mac Mini. For some reason Amiga Corp. does not want their OS running on what would undeniably the best possible platform for it. At any rate, it's probably the best fleshed-out OS that isn't part of the main trinity.

other than Windows and Linux I've tried TempleOS and RISC OS

I had a setup at one point where I could boot 7-8 different operating systems on my main desktop machine just for fun, and I had both Debian GNU/Hurd and BeOS installed. Other than those I'd recommend checking out ReactOS and Haiku.

Symbian 9.3. Smartphone's OS is OS too. I even had Chocolate Doom/Heretic/Hexen/Strife (yes, it was ported to Symbian), Quake, Quake II source ports for this system!

And here's device: https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_c5_5mp-4019.php

7 hours ago, Loud Silence said:

Symbian 9.3. Smartphone's OS is OS too. I even had Chocolate Doom/Heretic/Hexen/Strife (yes, it was ported to Symbian), Quake, Quake II source ports for this system!

 

And here's device: https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_c5_5mp-4019.php

Surprised someone still remembers the good ol' Symbian. I owned several phones that ran various versions of it, two most "recent" being Nokia 5800 XM and E7-00. The 5800 was my first touchscreen phone and dear lord, was it bad. Slow, clumsy, the screen get scratches if you tapped it too hard and its battery life was ass, but I completed Q1 on NM on it. The E7 was the most comfortable phone I've ever used and I can only hope its design will someday be reused for some modern smartphone. If not for the ubiquitous loose USB port issue, I'd still be using it to this day. Had plenty of emulators (SNES/GBA being the most popular ones) plus the ports you mentioned.

I can tell that I had relatives from my father's village home use mobile phones with Symbian OS.

I have tried a few in a VM from time to time, but to actually use... in chronological order ... (whew!) ...

* '81 Sinclair ZX-81 Basic (yes it was also the OS, kinda) on a ZX-81 (well, duh!)

* '81  CP/M (for Z-80) on RM 380Z & 480 Z

* '85 GEM and some Amstrad hack of MS-DOS (IIRC)

* '86 Multics (my introduction to the abomination of EMacs) - curses (and indeed termcap :p) be unto it

* '88 Unix on VAX (Ultrix) - yay!, finally a proper OS for me*

* '90 SunOS on MC68K

* '93 MS-DOS, Win 3.1, Win 3.11, VAX/VMS & SCO Unix (at least I think it was, been a long time)

* '95 WIndows 95

* '98 WIndows 98

* '99 Windows 2K (avoided Me like the plague)

* '01 Windows XP

* '06 WIndows Vista (ick)

* '10 Windows 7

* '12 Windows 8

* '15 Windows 10

* Mix of Windows 10 and various Ubuntu derivatives until '20

* '20 Mint 19

Well the question did ask :) And as at 55 I'm not the oldest here (Steve D?) some folks probably used older ones than that.

* That's where I discovered the Internet (not the WWW, it didn't exist yet); typed 'rm' to remove (delete) a file and mistyped it as 'rn' (read news, the old usenet groups), saw the results and thought WTF is that? (OK, not WTF as that didn't exist either, well I'd not heard of it back then :)).

20 hours ago, Aaron Blain said:

Did you manage to do anything with Menuet/Kolibri? I tried Kolibri a few times but never managed to get wifi working and that stalled me out. I'm fascinated by the prospect of a pure asm operating system, but I guess Kolibri's development arc is a pretty strong argument for high-level languages.

Kolibri definitely was for embedded use, but despite its very small memory requirements, it was pretty functional. MenuETOS was quite elaborate and a nice GUI, so i reckon that has only been improved since i tried it out (2012?)

My father was oddly interested in OSes back then and already tried out... "Geo Works" (?) for the C64, if I recall correctly. Additionally we had "The Ultimate Cartridge" or something, which basically looked like an OS to me. Don't remember much about this anymore, though. Other than that I tried out "BeOS" at some point and my alltime favourite and usable OS being the "Workbench" for my Amiga. Good times...

>only 1 mention of TempleOS