10 Operating Systems We’ll Never Forget

“Those were the good ole days”. How many times have you heard that? Personally, I’ve caught myself saying that many times in the past, but it’s a feeling we can all relate to. We all have fond memories of the past, and technology tends to be part of that. If you’ve been using computers for more than a few years, you probably have your own fair share of memories that bring a smile to your face. But how about an entire OS’?

Computerworld is taking a brief look at ten operating systems that we’ve left behind, but refuse to forget about. These are classics… no Windows XP or Mac OS 9 here. Ever hear of CP/M-86? I didn’t, but I don’t feel too bad since it pre-dates DOS, and was designed to run on 8080, 8088 and 8086 PCs. How about AmigaOS? Mac 7.0? GEOS 2.0? NexTStep (pictured below)?

Personally, my fond memory of an OS is with MS-DOS 5.0, which ran on my speedy 286 (frequency escapes me) and monochrome monitor (let’s hear it for black and barf!). My first major computer mistake was made on the same PC, when I went to format a floppy disk and accidentally formatted the hard disk. I tend to not pay attention to most things now, and back then, things were no different. If “Are you sure you want to format non-removable disk” didn’t clue me in, I’m not sure what else could’ve! Oh well, lesson learned.

Do you have fond memories of OS’ that have passed? Post about them in the related thread!

And the operating system, called NeXTStep, was frankly exciting. Its graphical interface was built around Display PostScript, so it was sharp and scalable. Underneath, it was built on a solid structure of Unix, including a Mach kernel and BSD code. And for the developers, it had an object-oriented application layer and tool kit. This made it much easier to code for than other platforms.