What if other operating systems had had more success around the world?

JJohnson

Banned
My question is pretty easy: what if other operating systems had had more success in the world?

We had others such as OS/2, Amiga OS, BeOS, Acorn (in the UK), and Atari for example. Let's say one or more of those took off a bit more, and we have a three- or four-way race amongst OS's and Microsoft didn't have the 90's to themselves, and Apple doesn't capture all the hip-mindshare in the 2000s with the iPod.

How about Amiga, Apple, and MS? Or Atari, OS/2, MS, and Apple? Or all of them, with Acorn taking Apple's place in the UK, the Dominions, and perhaps somewhat in Europe, and Apple moreso in America, and the others more worldwide?
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Amiga fell apart due to horrible management (the kind that makes 90s Apple look like it was actually well run). Also it was even more closed than the PPC Mac. Also to a large extent MacOS itself was a casualty of the period as today's MacOSX is just NeXtStep with an Apple logo.

Be was mostly shortsighted and took on MS when they were starting to be dangerous and before the EEE policy had led to the lawsuit. OS/2's main problem was that it was basically Win95; actually the relationship was inverse; it's hard to fight against yourself (which is why making sure linux binary compatibility remains between distros is a big deal). A bit like NT was VMS more or less entirely cloned. All I've seen of Be was Haiku, its open-source clone, and if that was the memory management of BeOS, I'm really glad Apple got bought out by NeXt :p

Did Atari actually use an OS of its own? I seem to recall it having been running Amiga or Commodore stuff...

Outside of the desktop, though, it's pretty hard to pinpoint a real dominant OS :p - Solaris used to be pretty huge, and it could potentially have used the server space to worm its way on the desktop, but Sun at some point turned into a lawyer firm with a few techies more than a giant of the computer world.
 
Last edited:
Did Atari actually use an OS of its own? I seem to recall it having been running Amiga or Commodore stuff...

Atari used Digital Research's GEM DOS and GUI for the ST/TT/Falcon ranges.

I think that what would give the best chance of an OS that could actually compete with Microsoft would be Linux development changing focus from server performance to desktop usability.
 

Lusitania

Donor
If IBM had bought an exclusive license for with DOS from Bill gates, he never would of been able to sell MS-DOS and the capitable with IBM which in the late 80s and 90s was a huge selling point. We would of seen a much more fragmented Operating system market.

Also IBM did not believe that the future of computing was in the PC but still in the big computers. Well maybe they are right but it will be in the middle of this century and not the last one.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
If IBM had bought an exclusive license for with DOS from Bill gates, he never would of been able to sell MS-DOS and the capitable with IBM which in the late 80s and 90s was a huge selling point. We would of seen a much more fragmented Operating system market.

Also IBM did not believe that the future of computing was in the PC but still in the big computers. Well maybe they are right but it will be in the middle of this century and not the last one.

Considering that IBM is still a megacorporation selling big iron and has offloaded most of the PC type stuff, I don't think they've changed their mindset much ;)
 

Lusitania

Donor
Considering that IBM is still a megacorporation selling big iron and has offloaded most of the PC type stuff, I don't think they've changed their mindset much ;)

no they have not and they see the big money in the service industry and the server market. As for PC they and even many people see them as going back to dumb PC and all the computing happening in the internet. Storage and gaming is moving that way. Even MS want to move the MS Office off the computer and onto huge servers on the net. People could then just rent the use of the software say penny a day.

If that happens then MS will double or tripple its profits. No piracy.
 
I have read that part of the reason that IBM did not buy the license was that IBM was concerned about the anti-trust litigation, as IBM had been involved with DOJ antitrust litigation for a long time.
If IBM had bought an exclusive license for with DOS from Bill gates, he never would of been able to sell MS-DOS and the capitable with IBM which in the late 80s and 90s was a huge selling point. We would of seen a much more fragmented Operating system market.

Also IBM did not believe that the future of computing was in the PC but still in the big computers. Well maybe they are right but it will be in the middle of this century and not the last one.
 
As for PC they and even many people see them as going back to dumb PC and all the computing happening in the internet. Storage and gaming is moving that way. Even MS want to move the MS Office off the computer and onto huge servers on the net. People could then just rent the use of the software say penny a day.


Yes. The smart money is on the "Computing As A Utility" model becoming ascendant and huge firms are spending with that prospect in mind.

A RAM box and quality monitor connected by a "fat pipe" to a server means a gamer doesn't have to upgrade his machine every 18 months to play the newest games, infected emails to unsuspecting little old ladies don't build bot-nets, and average users don't have to continually download patches or upgrades to read, watch, manipulate whatever files they're handling.

For most people, including Gen-Xers, maintaining a computer is a constant pain in the ass. Using computers like a utility puts all the headaches back in the hands of the "IT geeks" who love that kind of thing.
 
It was a bit touch and go in the 80's.

CP/M and concurrent CP/M was there and was a lot better than early versions of DOS. (who cannot remember the PIP commands, etc).

You could sharpen it by sayng WI Microsoft did not get a virtual monopoly on desktop computing (the OS and the applications).
 
There's one thing all of these OSes listed had in common: they weren't portable. They were tired to a specific line of hardware by design. Which was fine, back when there was neither any need for unified standards nor any real standardization in hardware.

That all changed with the 386. The 386 hit at just the right time, and had the right combination of features and power for the price that it pushed a major consolidation in hardware. And the OS tied to that hardware, IBM/MS DOS, was the one that won. By the release of Windows 3.1, Microsoft had really taken a pretty commanding lead in the market, and it was only going to snowball from there.

With Micro$oft's business tactics, and picking the right horse in the hardware race, it didn't matter how inferior technically it's OSes were. If you wanted the most commonly supported hardware on the market, you had to buy the IBM PC or its clones. And that meant DOS and later Windows.

There really only was one portable OS that had any sort of presence in the market at that time, and that was the Unix family. And while Unix was technically superior to DOS, it had whole hosts of its own problems. All the proprietary Unixes were incompatible with each other, and many were tied to hardware lines. Software, due to its proprietary nature, was at least as buggy as on DOS, and there just weren't as many eyes. And divided against itself via the Unix Wars, and some of the best ones being obliterated by legal troubles (the inimitable Berkeley Unix Software Distribution), Unix lost, and it lost hard.

Bottomline, you can't have the world run on IBM PCs and see anyone but Microsoft be top dog. Maybe, if things went just right in the 80s, Unix could be the one to come out on top, but with the way AT&T treated Unix patents and copyright following the end of the consent agreement, that doesn't seem likely.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Heh, yeah, thinking of it: Microsoft dominance of the market coincided not only with a decline phase for Apple (even as they tried to counter it with the mac clones), but also two successive lawsuits against BSD (which allowed Linux to get in the old BSD niche on the server market) and Linux (which more or less killed its prospects on the desktop despite its massive hardware support for the time, even though it had a period of lagging in that department for common consumer hardware after that).

That MS was found to be involved in both trials is not too surprising :p
 
this may be a tad winded...

I used an Amiga from 85 till 1996..
great computer.. lousy management and marketing. Had some decent apps, especially in the graphics, desktop publishing side of things such as:


  • Video Toaster
  • Page Master
  • Final Writer
  • Brilliance
  • Deluxe Paint IV
  • Art Department
Operating System was a little shaky at times liking to crash here and there, but over all very usable. what killed it for most was the thought that it was a games platform only. and once the compatibles took off ..well finding Amiga software outside of Amiga oriented shops was pretty tough.

However all in all the Amiga was a lot bigger in Europe then here in the US, so have commodore pay more attention to that market, makeing the right choices, getting the machine into schools and the homes and businesses and you just might have a shot at it.

How the Mac survived i will never know since i had a 040 mac for like 3 weeks.. i got so frustrated with it i finally took it back.. way to sluggish. apps yes.. sluggish and slow and no multi-tasking. My 030 Amiga 1200 ran circles around the thing.

BeOS never stood a chance .. way too late to the game.

Atari suffered the same problems as Amiga with the exception of finding a niche to hide in.

I would have to say that once the ink dried between IBM and microsoft that it was just a matter of time before it was game over. Why would you program for 5 or 6 different platforms when you can program for 1.

Kind of the reason why Linux is having troubles hitting the desktops.. the software that people think they NEED to use isnt available. they dont want to use Open Office .. they want to use MS office and they want the OS to be intuitive and simple to use so that grandma and grandpa can use the thing, linux is making some headway there, but its almost mute at this point outside of embedded server based stuff.

Look at cell phones as an example.

In the beginning there were Lots of Systems.. blackberry, Iphone, Windows Mobile.. and other mobile systems.. Of them Iphone was the most polished and best platform on the worst carrier. However everyone was jealous and wanted one. MS couldnt get Windows Mobile right, Business loved Blackberry, but noone else did. then along comes Android. Now Android is like early DOS/WINDOWS.. still putting the pieces together, but doing it rather quickly and its available for most cell carriers to use. and they are.. in droves.. so in the end you will have one cell platform.. my bet is on Android.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Kind of the reason why Linux is having troubles hitting the desktops.. the software that people think they NEED to use isnt available. they dont want to use Open Office .. they want to use MS office and they want the OS to be intuitive and simple to use so that grandma and grandpa can use the thing, linux is making some headway there, but its almost mute at this point outside of embedded server based stuff.

I honestly question whether anyone who thinks windows is simple and intuitive compared to Ubuntu has ever used windows. :p

Also I doubt single platform will happen. Single-platform was an accident on computers, and actually is a myth because once you look at the whole, it's still a mostly unix, fragmented world (most computers are, after all, servers and embedded devices), with a suddenly decreasing windows share. Official numbers are 90%, but MS internal numbers are actually purporting that they may have gone down to 75% at this point.
 
I honestly question whether anyone who thinks windows is simple and intuitive compared to Ubuntu has ever used windows. :p

Also I doubt single platform will happen. Single-platform was an accident on computers, and actually is a myth because once you look at the whole, it's still a mostly unix, fragmented world (most computers are, after all, servers and embedded devices), with a suddenly decreasing windows share. Official numbers are 90%, but MS internal numbers are actually purporting that they may have gone down to 75% at this point.

while i do agree with the ubuntu remark.. the sad thing is still that the marketing and corporate brainwashing that has taken place still makes everyone think they need a windows box for home usage and compatibility is what drives windows market share. and yes while it is loosing face to IPAD/LINUX/MAC OS ( really its BSD) whatever it is this week/more portable handheld devices... it still and for the foreseeable future in charge of the desktop.

Windows Never had the corporate server market, while it did better then Apple in that arena .. most things run Unix variants. all my stuff, from my barracuda boxes to my firewall to the phone system running a flavor of unix/linux.. Even my I5 AS/400 runs a linux partition along with OS 5.4

so yes i agree with your statement in the server market..

on the home front though.. I find windows to be pretty user friendly. not Mac OS simplistic.. but friendly enough.

I even went as far as to propose a switch from Windows Clients to Linux Clients at work.. showed the cost savings and all the other good stuff.. everyone around the table had a blank look and asked questions like.. what about Word? what about Excel? what about Outlook or Word Perfect or Internet Explorer? Its engrained. not that it wont change up eventually.. and sure .. while there will never be a single ring to rule them all .. there will always be a more dominate OS amongst the herd.

was gonna say it was a shame Tramiel left commodore.. Would have been interesting to see if he could pull the rabbit out of the hat twice with the Amiga as he did with the C=64 ..but then again the Amiga might have been still born or simply turned into a game machine.
 
this may be a tad winded...

I used an Amiga from 85 till 1996..
great computer.. lousy management and marketing. Had some decent apps, especially in the graphics, desktop publishing side of things such as:


  • Video Toaster
  • Page Master
  • Final Writer
  • Brilliance
  • Deluxe Paint IV
  • Art Department
Operating System was a little shaky at times liking to crash here and there, but over all very usable. what killed it for most was the thought that it was a games platform only. and once the compatibles took off ..well finding Amiga software outside of Amiga oriented shops was pretty tough.

However all in all the Amiga was a lot bigger in Europe then here in the US, so have commodore pay more attention to that market, makeing the right choices, getting the machine into schools and the homes and businesses and you just might have a shot at it.

How the Mac survived i will never know since i had a 040 mac for like 3 weeks.. i got so frustrated with it i finally took it back.. way to sluggish. apps yes.. sluggish and slow and no multi-tasking. My 030 Amiga 1200 ran circles around the thing.

BeOS never stood a chance .. way too late to the game.

Atari suffered the same problems as Amiga with the exception of finding a niche to hide in.

I would have to say that once the ink dried between IBM and microsoft that it was just a matter of time before it was game over. Why would you program for 5 or 6 different platforms when you can program for 1.

Kind of the reason why Linux is having troubles hitting the desktops.. the software that people think they NEED to use isnt available. they dont want to use Open Office .. they want to use MS office and they want the OS to be intuitive and simple to use so that grandma and grandpa can use the thing, linux is making some headway there, but its almost mute at this point outside of embedded server based stuff.

Look at cell phones as an example.

In the beginning there were Lots of Systems.. blackberry, Iphone, Windows Mobile.. and other mobile systems.. Of them Iphone was the most polished and best platform on the worst carrier. However everyone was jealous and wanted one. MS couldnt get Windows Mobile right, Business loved Blackberry, but noone else did. then along comes Android. Now Android is like early DOS/WINDOWS.. still putting the pieces together, but doing it rather quickly and its available for most cell carriers to use. and they are.. in droves.. so in the end you will have one cell platform.. my bet is on Android.

This almost sounds like In the Begining there was the Command Line revised for the 2010s
 
Hehe. I actually still consider a commandline pretty essential. And OSX is about when I stopped sneering at macs :p (okay around Tiger)


no doubt.. though Mac osX (whatever it is) is still bsd with a happy go lucky mac style interface over it.. the stuff before was rubbish ;)
 
Top