Top 10 Best Operating Systems of All Time

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What are the best personal computer operating systems ever released? Join me as I count down my personal top ten operating systems of all time! WARNING: You WILL disagree!
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Sources used in this video (under fair use):
Computer Chronicles - Commodore 64: • Computer Chronicles - ...
Computer Chronicles - Operating Systems: • The Computer Chronicle...
Computer Chronicles: Gary Kildall Special: • The Computer Chronicle...
BeOS Demo Video: • BeOS DEMO VIDEO
Computer Chronicles - New PCs: • The Computer Chronicle...
MS-DOS 5 Promotional Video: • MS-DOS 5 Promotional V...
Pirates of Silicon Valley QDOS scene
Computer Chronicles - MS-DOS 6.2: • The Computer Chronicle...
Microsoft Windows 95 Video Guide: • Video
Windows 95 Commercial: • Windows 95 Commercial
Windows 95 Release NZ 1995: • Video
Triumph of the Nerds: • PBS Triumph of the Ner...
NeXTSTEP Release 3 Demo: • NeXTSTEP Release 3 Demo
Steve Jobs demoes NeXT's capacity in a TV report: • Video
Steve Jobs brainstorms with the NeXT team: • Steve Jobs brainstorms...
Revolution OS: • Video
#retrocomputing #operatingsystems #computing

[@danwood_uk]

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What would a VPN help in security? It is just moving your end-point from ISP to another commercial company .. who can then see all your traffic

[@tomtheplummer7322]

Jeez more Nord

[@lambertax]

I don't think I've ever subscribed for a channel introducing poor adds in THE MIDDLE of a video. So sorry but. I'm going away.

[@jochenstacker7448]

Did you know that "Ubuntu" is an ancient African word that translates as "I can't configure Debian".

[@ursherbahjosef3331]

😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 lol... Dead 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@ursherbahjosef3331]

Debian fan boy booooo🤭

[@SakuraNyan]

I thought "Ubuntu" meant "abuse sudo"?

[@brentboswell1294]

@@SakuraNyan there's a one liner for that: sudo passwd root 🤣

[@ShiroCh_ID]

well i use ubuntu bedrock linux

[@k001daddy]

I'm just surprised OS/2 Warp didn't even place.

[@ShamrockParticle]

I bought it the day Win95 came out. It looked pretty but was a kludge

[@georgeworley6927]

@@ShamrockParticle I loved OS/2 Warp. Still have the last BETA that came out in a fancy binder. I have a 20 year old computer that is still running the last Beta. Too bad IBM didn't release a Y2K fix for it. A job that had on 1/1/2000 had a data center of 250 with one OS/2 Warp server and it was the only server that was reporting the wrong date. We manually set the date for the first year 1900's that matched the year 2000 so that the day of the week was right and the 2 programs that was running only used the day of the week, day of month and the month were correct. Hard coded the year.

[@gregmcpherson5671]

I used it too. Excellent, and my obsession for 6 months or so. But it live and died. It failed to get enough traction to fight Windows. It certainly would deserve to be an "honourable mention".

[@theursulus]

OS2 was a preemptive multi tasking os when Windows was 3.1! I remember running Windows 3.1 in a window!

[@gregmcpherson5671]

@@theursulus Yes! It was great. And it did proper folder windows too. Better in every way. But then I ended up running most things in Windows 3 mode, because that was the software I need to run. So... I went back to Windows because that's better than Window Emulation.

[@JesuszillaS]

That AmigaOS file type concept is just mind blowing to me. Absolute black magic how any program can open a new file type just by registering it.

[@bobmcbob4399]

Interesting for sure, but how does the Amiga text editor open a .png file? Render as ASCII art?

[@QuantumScratcher]

@@bobmcbob4399 when you drag a png into notepad it shows the raw data, probably similar?

[@samapade5645]

@@bobmcbob4399 Well, the system is fairly sophisticated; there are datatypes for datatypes. In this case there is picture.datatype which is referenced by png.datatype; the DT aware but graphically incapable text editor checks the file type, sees that the file uses a class of datatype it doesn't support, throws an error, and continues doing it's assigned task. Note that this is WAY simplified. 👍😀 😎

[@haplozetetic9519]

I'm a little late to the game here, but... Every file has some sort of identifier in it that indicates what it is. The OS reads the identifier, and searches a list of file identifier types to find that identifier. If it finds it, there is a corresponding entry that indicates the correct kind of application to use for that type of file. To "register" the file type just means adding that identifier to the list and a corresponding entry that indicates what kind of application to use for that type of file. If a file is a png, gif, tiff, jpg, etc, the OS will read that the appropriate application for these are image viewers and image editors. Other file types will be set to open with applications appropriate for their particular file type as well. The Amiga was definitely ahead its time with this and many other things. With much greater color depth, full multitasking, full multimedia with both audio and video capabilities on an 8 MHz cpu, and more that Window and Mac couldn't do on a 500MHz machine without expensive extra hardware.

[@JesuszillaS]

@@haplozetetic9519 The Amiga sounds like an incredible piece of computing history that I wish I got to experience. Hard to believe something with specifications like that could do so much!

[@tobiasstamenkovic9628]

You forgot about OS/2... Literally everyone hosting a mailbox ran it, due to multitasking done right. ...heck, you could even play Mahjong while its still being installed. It was pretty amazing. Also, "DR/Novell DOS". *cough* If MS-DOS 5 makes the list, DR definitely deserves a spot too.

[@jrgenjohansen2799]

Which you can also do on a Linux-based OS.

[@acalthu]

@@jrgenjohansen2799 but not at the time OS/2 was around. People were then still struggling to get a GUI to work properly.

[@carlos-ju7ce]

​@@acalthu - exactly. I ran OS/2 Warp and I remember being able to format Drive A & B at the same time as I ran a check on Drive C, with only the one IO card. Ten diskettes to install...first O/S I bought 😆

[@jeremyworkman5104]

In a fair world, OS/2 would have been where Windows is now. OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 totally destroyed Windows 95/NT in terms of multitasking, speed and stability, not to mention being truly object oriented and having a far superior file system (HPFS). But, 1. IBM couldn't market their way out of a wet paper bag, and lacked the foresight that by 2000 most homes would have a computer. They marketed poorly, and mostly to a limited audience. True to their name I suppose, International Business Machines. 2. The bugs that were in OS/2, IBM's hands were tied to fix because of legal rights to portions of the code due to the partnership with Microsoft. Ironically a good portion of the bugs in the system were Microsoft contributions. I'm not sure how common knowledge it is, but what Microsoft released as Windows 3.0 was essentially a reworked version of what was supposed to be released as OS/2 1.3 (I think I have the version numbers right, it's been awhile).

[@CraigTalbert]

@@jeremyworkman5104 You are correct, sir. I'm sad they forgot these.

[@JeremyBolanos]

My first home pc was an Amiga 500 I bought at the Post Exchange when I was in the Army way back in 1988. I still remember going to shareware parties with a stack of 3.5" disks. I miss it.

[@gonzo3915]

Similar thing, i miss those days.

[@telengardforever7783]

The first time I heard a sound card was in a PX at Fort Shafter. I never heard high quality orchestral music or a human voice from a computer before. It was really amazing.

[@Skyhawk780]

I remember doing something similar only it was a Tandy 1000TX, 5 1/4" & 3.5" disks (no HDD) ... I still have that machine along with a TI-99/A, both in working order. I miss those days with friends.

[@marksterling8286]

Good list but os/2 I think deserves a place. OS/2 warp was great

[@l.matthewblancett8031]

os2 way underrated absolutely. i ran a bbs on a 386 and 8g RAM, with windows in a box, and gamed.

[@ElsinoreRacer]

It wasn't until Win 7 that Windows caught up. 10+ years later. Anyone who ran Warp 3 through Warp 4 spent half their time trying to figure out why everyone else WASN'T. I still don't get it.

[@savage1267]

I was a little surprised it wasn't on the list, too.

[@Lucius_Chiaraviglio]

I would even put OS/2 2.0 in the list as the first version of OS/2 that was actually good. But the problem was that OS/2 was underrated by IBM itself. Remember that this was the time when they had Louis Gerstner (that they got from RJR Nabisco, of all places), who said "the last thing IBM needs right now is a vision", as chairman and CEO. IBM didn't even bundle OS/2 with many of their computers of the time, instead bundling them with MS-DOS. Naturally, most other PC makers did the same or even worse. So the downfall of OS/2 was sad but not surprising.

[@gunlovingliberal1706]

It just never achieved sufficient market share. The turf war between IBM and MS was the main reason it did not thrive. From everything I have heard it was fantastic. Window 3.1 was a kludge, but that is what most people got instead.

[@Z4yx]

2:05 GEOS 3:27 CP/M 5:20 Windows 2000 7:01 BeOS 9:32 MS-DOS 11:10 Windows 95 12:55 OS X Tiger 14:41 Amiga OS 17:01 NeXTSTEP 21:01 Linux

[@MrLondonGo]

First thank you!!! Secondly where the f**k is Solaris 11.4 ???!!

[@rockets4kids]

Surprised I've got so little to gripe about here. OS X Snow Leopard was far and away the best version of OS X, though. WIn 95 only deserves to be on the list because it was the first version of Windows not to suck balls.

[@MrLondonGo]

@@rockets4kids but but what about Solaris?

[@rockets4kids]

@@MrLondonGo What about SunOS 4.1.4, which everyone used until the SVR4 system stabilized? What about Minix? For without Minix there likely would have been no Linux. Which reminds me, without Gnu Hurd there wouldn't have been all of the userspace Unix tools which also went into Linux. (Gnu Hurd was on the list of worst operating systems.) It's just so hard to get behind Solaris in the Oracle era. DTrace and ZFS are awesome, but they can be had elsewhere these days.

[@psarnack]

@@rockets4kids yeah .. Solaris 2.5.1 /x86 version + Developmet kit . '95 as I remember , that was something . plus QNX and yes , OS2 at the same time on IBM PS2 ( remember running Delphi 1 on OS2 with windows 3.11 in the window , been more stable than running native on 3.11 )

[@ItsMichaelReyes]

I personally loved Windows 7. It was fast and simple to learn.

[@peterscott2662]

Win7 is my favorite Windows and I started with Windows 3.1. Amiga OS is another as it was what I used before Windows 3.1.

[@projectjinc.5152]

Windows 7 is hands down the best looking OS of all time

[@Scudmaster11]

XP Welcoming os

[@onemoregodrejected9369]

Win xp and win 7 were windows golden age. Windows xp is my windows 7 in terms of nostalgia

[@qwerty13380]

I am still using Windows 7, why would you stop?

[@catriona_drummond]

My all time favourite was Windows 7. It was a proper Desktop OS, looked incredibly pretty, was absolutely stable and rock solid. Win 7 was the only OS that I installed when it came out in 2009 and never had to reinstall once in over 7 years of usage, including exchanging hardware. I then switched to Win 10 which has it's upsides but is a horrible flat and ugly half-mobile mess that likes killing the whole system with an update. Loved Windows 7, it was the best user experience out of all the ones I ever had to work with.

[@QuadTubeChannel]

I still run 7 on an Intel i3-based laptop for web browsing and file management.. solid as a rock. Boots quick even off an old hard drive, and like you I've never had to re-install the OS.

[@bobmcbob4399]

@@QuadTubeChannel Same here, but of SSD and I use linux to manage Win7 image backups

[@Andrew-Kerr]

I missed out on Windows 7, because the first internet connected device I owned was a 2nd hand laptop that came with Windows Vista and I hated it so much, I ended up installing Ubuntu on it and that improved my user experience so much I never went back to using Windows. At the time I had very little experience of using computers in any form and I believe this decision to switch to a Linux based OS so early on was critical to me eventually going on to learn how to build and publish websites including server management.

[@MultiTintin007]

Same here ... my favorite is Win7 for it's stability

[@Kiham80]

I still have a laptop running Win 7. It regularly had uptimes in the range of "a couple of months to a year". Stable as a rock indeed. My newish laptop runs Win 10 which is fine, but it has a nasty habit of rebooting every now and then when Im not around. Taking a bunch of unsaved changes to documents and the like with it. Plus rebooting it is a pain since there is always a hard to skip tutorial or some attempt to get me to switch to Win 11.

[@davidmclachlan4165]

Absolutely spot on with Linux at number 1. Just imagine where we would be if Linux never was. It's played a massive part in the evoloution of the IT world.

[@an2qzavok]

The world would not be much different, with BSD in the first place instead.

[@PaulMJohnson]

I think we'd be vastly better off had Linux never been. What Linux managed to do, because it was free, was kill innovation in the OS space. There used to be loads of options as to which OS to use, but then Linux came along and demonstrated that "cheap and good enough" beats "paid for and good" and so it is.

[@Voidsworn]

@@PaulMJohnson Pretty sure that's not the case. Plenty of OSes were bought by other companies, incorporated some elements into their own OSes or just left to die.

[@brostenen]

We would still use Os/2 whenever we went for cash and had to use an ATM. 😁

[@linuxriverrat2294]

@@PaulMJohnson yeah, it's hard to compete with free. ;)

[@ScrapKing73]

PC/GEOS was the most impressive OS technical achievement, IMO. It was a pre-emptive multithreaded multitasking OS that ran on 8088 interrupt codes! It ran OK on an 8088, ran well on an 8086, and was blazing fast on a 286. Nothing else has got anything close to that much oomph out of silicon that inexpensive.

[@dewiz9596]

I loved the Windows 2000 OS. It brought back “Append” which had been ditched by Windows 95 and 98. I remember Windows 95 breaking my Sort Program, written using the Compact Memory Model in Borland Turbo C. I had to rewrite it using the small memory model, which required a lot more temporary files. I think Microsoft peaked with MSDOS 6.22

[@Skyhawk780]

I agree & have an old Compaq M700 with extra HDD's for Win95, Win98SE & Win2k... also a Tandy 1000TX running DOS 6.22 & Windows 3.1

[@thelovertunisia]

I find it increadible how they were able to make a GUI run on the C64. That is real developers. Now with resource opulence, they can created bloated ineffcicient code and get away with it!

[@thelovertunisia]

My first contact with "computers" was a Microsoft MSX, an 8 bit computer like the C64 which booted into basic and had a cassette tape recorder for storing programs. Good old days.

[@frankov_83]

absolutely, it's the main reason why I stopped using Windows10. Horribly bloated with a huge amount of processes running in the background and slowing down a machine with 16gb of RAM. Using Pop! OS ever since.

[@thelovertunisia]

@@frankov_83 Is it possible to use this type if trick like they did to create a web browser for instance that would run well on very old hardware and yet allow internet usage somehow modern?

[@frankov_83]

@@thelovertunisia not sure, but that's the thing, Windows runs badly on modern, very capable hardware too :D

[@thelovertunisia]

@@frankov_83 I have a pentium 3 with 256 mb of ram and I have slacko puppy with palemoon on it works ok.

[@jnb756]

Finally Linux getting the love it deserves - I agree fully with it being number 1. I have been using it as my main OS since 1996 (back before it was easy to use) and only Windows 2000 challenged it for reliability. The only OS I see missing is Solaris. That short lived OS was a game changer for graphic design and for $10000 you would get the OS and then a free Solaris box, But it never really made it into the personal operating space until the end so I guess I can understand its absence. Good list.

[@MTonki3369]

Irix was brilliant. But not mainstream and definitely not cheap (hardware+OS). But if you got to make Jurassic Park in 1992, it was your go-to! Digital UNIX (for DEC) was shite.

[@hwertz10]

Yeah I think the cheapest of the UNIX workstations I ever personally saw was an SGI O2, they had gotten it down to like $5,000. But by then a PC with a 3D accelerator was under $2,000, and of course a few years after that, you had 3DFX, ATI, and Nvidia all producing nice 3D accelerators for a few hundred bucks that you could drop into pretty much any PC. That really killed off SGI's lower-end sales entirely. Linux didn't help things at all in that regard -- the HP PA-RISC and DEC Alpha were taking turns at being the fastest machines on the planet, and they were like 3-5x the speed of a Intel (or AMD) CPU -- but at over 10x the cost. So already in the late 1990s when I was in college, the computer science lab had HP PA-RISC UNIX workstations (about 1/3rd computers and 2/3rds x terminals, which HP used the same chassis for so you couldn't tell which you were sitting at unless you looked at the model number.) And SGIs. But they were replacing these with PCs with Linux as time went on, a healthy PA-RISC had 3-5x the performance but at 10-15x the cost, and we were learning programming on these systems, not doing heavy-duty engineering and numerical processing, so the extra speed was not useful for what the comp sci department used them for.

[@MatthewSmith001]

​@@MTonki3369I had a buddy in high school whose rich nerdy dad ran Irix.

[@HeartlandTuber]

I have a soft spot in my heart for CP/M. I started my programming career in early 80's writing insurance policy calculation programs for independent insurance agencies using CP/M in BASIC on early PCs such as Xerox, TRS80, and the IBM PC. I still have a hardback book from that era with dust cover, a classic which apparently is fetching a nice price on the collectibles market, I recently did a search as we were downsizing our library of thousands of books by more than 60%. I decided to keep it for now. Fond memories of my entrance into a career in programming and IT.

[@pstanyer1]

cp/m was pretty good, I also used Concurrent CP/M which allowed 4 virtual work spaces so you could run edit and compile code in three separate windows . Was a touch slow but certainly my long term favourite.

[@osu9400]

While not my "favorite" Win 95 was the most influential OS of all time. It was such a huge cultural phenomenon, people were camping outside, the TV adverts were exciting, etc.. Most importantly, it gave us true plug-and-play from any vendor and the Start Menu.

[@joegee2815]

Having lived through the computer era I've used most of these operating systems. Today my daily driver is Linux so am quite happy with your rating.

[@Uniblab8]

AMEN!!!

[@LawsForever]

Back in the Motorola M6809 era I wrote my own (limited) OS, including word processor and simple database for my hand-soldered machine. These were good ol'e times. Today for me nothing else counts but Linux, partly due the possibility to change parts of it on the source code level.

[@joegee2815]

@@LawsForever I had a Color Computer that I eventually ran OS/9 on and got actual multi-user/multi-processing. I had no real reason or application other than it was cool to log in from a terminal while being logged in on the console.

[@LawsForever]

@@joegee2815 You mean OS/9 by Microware? Amazing to hear from someone else's experiences. Ever heard of EFFO (European Forum for OS/9) back in the 80ties (I think)? I was one of their trimestrial newspaper's authors. Among other things I published drivers and modules I wrote for OS/9 in C and Motorola assembler. That was (or is?) a really powerful real time OS!

[@joegee2815]

@@LawsForever Yep, that's the one, at the time I was working at Bellcore (previously Bell Labs) and was learning Unix. The idea of having a modern OS like Unix at home was appealing to me. I was going to attach modems and start up a timeshare BBS but had to move to a new place and the project got scuttled forever apparently...

[@batlin]

Wow, didn't know about the datatypes feature of the Amiga operating system. That is seriously powerful and ahead of its time...

[@Orlor]

It was a amazing OS for it's time.

[@arieshausdorff3396]

The datatypes feature was one of the reasons why I used my A1200 until 2005. Because I had to professionally juggle with so many different types of files, and the file format converters available for Windows and MacOS that could convert the various files were costly and unreliable, whilst on the Amiga you could load everything ( aside of Cheesecakes ) and then export it to the format you needed. Right away, no hassle. Also, the Amiga OS 3.1 UI was smoother and more responsive on a 25/50MHz MC68040 machine than Windows 98 on a 366MHz Pentium 2 and about equal to XP on a 600MHz P3.

[@grey5626]

Data Types seemed more powerful and more featured than MIME Types, which seemed like a bad imitation of a good idea better implemented on the Amiga than the WWW.

[@wild13hawk]

One of my favorite things about BeOS was install time. I was doing deskside support at the time, having to do a lot of Windows installs, which always took forever and required a lot of babysitting. BeOS was up and fully functional in 15 minutes every time, even if I was installing a multi boot system. Just so much better on the same hardware.

[@residentgrey]

win2k is definitely a worthy achievement. I had my box running with plenty of bells and whistles at 38mb RAM occupied, thanks in part to using an alt shell and going through BlackViper's services list. The individual has lists of services that are safe to have set to off or by request instead of how they typically end up being set, freeing up tens of MB in RAM.

[@scallen3841]

I do that to my windows 10 laptop and my windows 11 laptop , windows runs so much faster

[@michelegambierazzi]

For me, if I would do a "top X" operating systems I would do two lists, one for operating systems which have historical value and made things that moved the industry forward and one list for the operating systems that I actually like (to use today or have used earlier). It feels very strange to compile a list where the different systems are based on different values.

[@M4rkV3n0m]

That is a very rounded opinion to have. However the OP clearly stated those are his personal favorites and nothing more. Nevertheless a video based on your suggestion would be neat. How about it Dan?

[@gyrcom]

Linux is the best overall because of availability. The one that even beats Linux is QNX. It is everywhere, hidden, reliable even runs heart machines, airplanes. If your life depends on it... use QNX.

[@donaldwilliams6821]

@@gyrcom Yes QNX is great. It's also an RTOS. No quite the same things as a general purpose OS. I once worked on project to migrate Wind River to QNX. WR was faster but terrible driver support at the time. QNX with Photon micro GUI was very fast and slick.

[@lornetyndale7974]

OS/2 should have been on the list.

[@DaryleTilroe]

+1 on this! OS/2 was my daily driver for quite a while between Amiga and when MS and Windows finally got their shit together.

[@fentonmsu]

I would say xp pro was the best since it could do everything for the time and a big step from 9x and 2000. Easy to network and best gui.

[@user-ec6vp8kw3q]

Xp wireless networking was terrible till service pack 2.

[@cr10001]

Certainly the best look 'n feel of any version of Windows, IMO. Which is why my Debian is configured to look broadly similar to XP (not 'cos I love XP specifically, just 'cos I like that look).

[@abhabh6896]

@@cr10001 XP was able to run anything. So many people became linux users specifically because XP EOL.

[@bernds1488]

@@abhabh6896 you're right win7 was no replacement. but linux was not mature enough. because the poor acpi support it wasn't good for laptops: they were overheating because the cpu fans didn't work properly, which was ignored for years.

[@abhabh6896]

@@bernds1488 I loved win7 and became linux user at its eol but many people disliked it for...whatever reason.

[@bradleyp3655]

I have been in the computer field as a hobbyist since I started as a teenager in 1977 (I did three years college SC course in the mid 1990s and computer electronics courses in 2000-2001) . This is by far one of the best 10 ten lists of best OSs I have ever seen. You're on point with what each one has contributed to the industry we know today. Now I have fun learning Blender and 3D modeling and animation and video editing with DaVinci Resolve, along with some simple Linux script writing.

[@beckyzwhite]

Windows 95 - Start me up. I noticed at the time that they omitted the line "you make a grown man cry" from their advertising.

[@amp2amp800]

Weird Al Windows 95 Sucks kzbin.info/www/bejne/hKjFaGeLhrV-adU

[@dwightstewart7181]

Actually, Windows 95 went on to be a truly stable, full-featured, operating system. I stuck with Windows 95 for quite some time, avoiding Vista and similar.

[@cr10001]

It was Win95 that converted me to Linux. My home PC was running Windows 3.1 and when I connected to the Internet and started having difficulty with filenames > 8.3, I figured I had to upgrade and I sure wasn't paying $$$ for the crashing-several-times-a-day nightmare (W95) that I was used to at my work. So I bought a Red Hat CD (not having a clue about Linux) and never looked back...

[@devilaverage6718]

LOL I always wondered, why they did not use Iron Maiden's song "Moonchild" for any Windows 7 ad, which starts like "Seven deadly sins, seven ways to win, seven holy paths to hell and your trip begins". Fits perfectly.

[@davidh.4944]

@@amp2amp800 Not Al. The correct title is "Bought It Up", by Bob Rivers.

[@bigfootisjustreallyshy]

Host:"You will disagree with this video" Me:"that means he probably wont even mention Linux" Host:"Linux is number 1!" Me: 😲

[@linuxstreamer8910]

i run Pop!_OS it is Ubuntu based love Linux

[@quizarorobzaqu8558]

@@linuxstreamer8910 arch xd

[@moth5799]

@@linuxstreamer8910 I use Arch, btw.

[@Lucius_Chiaraviglio]

I agree with Linux for #1. But I wish that (in addition to OS/2) the list also included FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD.

[@moth5799]

@@Lucius_Chiaraviglio Yeah the BSDs are great.

[@american6183]

At least you gave a shout-out to DEC's VAX. Loved that baby. Its all in the past now but still gives me good vibes when I think about it.

[@markmshockey1769]

I have to agree and expected a DEC product to be in the list. At the risk of dating myself I used micro-rsx on a pdp11 and saw what i thought were innovative features. Then VMS on an alpha lol was awesome. If i had an error it would unwind the stack and show me the problem quickly.

[@PaulAJohnston1963]

Understand it's not normally considered a Desktop OS but I really enjoyed Solaris, both on 86 and Sparc. Rock solid which is my most important criteria. I used to look after a Uni cluster of the machines and they just did the job. Sun Microsystems RIP :-(

[@bertnijhof5413]

For me Linux is the best! However I did miss Windows for Workgroups 3.11, the system that for the first time combined networking, internet browsing with cooperative multi tasking and a nice proven GUI. Basically the hyped Windows 95 only added 32-bits and the start button to that :) Real multi tasking (preemptive) was available for NT based systems only. For most home users real multitasking only has been introduced with Windows XP. Based on technical quality and innovation and not looks, I promote Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (networking) and Windows XP (its long life 12.5 years). Microsoft had to force users to leave Windows XP.

[@FindecanorNotGmail]

Dan Wood being a Brit, I had expected RISC OS to be in this list.

[@CommodoreFan64]

I was wondering if it was going to make it myself, but I can see why he did not include it, as while the ARM CPU/SOC have made an everlasting impact on the computing world, RISC OS outside of the UK not so much, as I'm from the US, and never even heard of it till the early 00's when I was still on dialup internet, and would read hours of Wikipedia articles, and different websites on the then history of different OS's, and the hardware they ran on.

[@Wol747]

Nothing to do with being a Brit! The whole concept was so much more advanced than most of the others. It’s easy now to look down on something that was leading edge 30 years ago with what are now primitive graphics etc, but you wouldn’t have had years of bug fixes, security updates etc with it!

[@mallockarcher]

Windows felt like a backward step for me when I was forced into the world of PC compatibles. That's term I've not used in a while.

[@TechRyze]

Yep - RISC OS was very significant, and if this was a top 15, then it would be in there, as would OS/2 and probably GEM. Anyone interested in OSs on older systems should REALLY take a look at Podatron's SymbOS for Z80 systems such as the Amstrad CPC, MSX, Enterprise & PCW. It's an astonishing achievement - basically Windows 95 on those old 8-bit systems, supporting a large range of hardware and upgrades, and running in 128KB upwards. Mass storage, multi-tasking, networking, video playback - the list goes on. Absolutely amazing running it on a CPC464 with a 1MB RAM upgrade and SD card mass storage with 32GB or as much as you decide to slot in there. Unbelievable achievement.

[@FlyboyHelosim]

RISC OS was probably the first desktop OS that I ever used, back in primary school.

[@multimood]

Windows95 was a huge step up from 3.1, it was nice not having to deal with IRQs, DMA and memory addresses. I still have a warm place in my heart for DOS, I run 3.3 on my AT and 6.2 on a few other machines. Your list was very good

[@AndrewLohmannKent]

Windows 95 had a crippled serial ports to slow Netscape but also anything else - i would say it was therefore a junk os.

[@attica7980]

I moved from Windows 3.11 straight to Linux. I avoided all later Windows releases.

[@dannydoolhoff4215]

IRQs and DMA was really ni different with windows 95 than before it the thing is hardware designs evolved at the same time, making it possible for software to do more to configure the interrupts and memory addressesing instead of making it fully manual by the user. Windows 95 - Windows ME were all still just additional software running on top is DOS. DOS was more obscured and crippled in ME, but still there. Config.sys and autorun.bat where still very important and in place for many years.

[@Orlor]

Thumbs up for putting AmigaOS so high in the list. That put a smile on my face. :) Even you listing the features it had in 1985 just gave me goosebumps. It was the first OS I had ever experienced and my most satisfying one to use. Too bad they were "run" by Commodore...

[@10MARC]

Wonderful video Dan, and actually pretty close to the mark. OS/2 was actually a really great OS that was so far ahead of MS DOS and Windows 2.x and 3.x. it took advantage of the 286 chip and 386 chip, where DOS just kind of tacked on lame support for it. It is also amazing still to see Mac OS X, Windows 95 and Be OS finally catch up to what we were doing on out Amiga's 10 years earlier...

[@scottjohnson5415]

We used OS/2 Warp for a Windows dial-up remote access server. Each user had their own Windows 3.11 environment in a VM. That OS was rock solid and hardly ever crashed!

[@billyoung8118]

Absolutely loved the Commodore 64 t-shirt. Learned assembly on it. Including raster interrupts. Also built my own line drawing and region fill routines around age 16. My students today can't believe that the total system memory available was sometimes less than the memory needed to store the app icon image of today's computers.

[@telengardforever7783]

I always tell people that I did more on that 64k of RAM than I ever had on 32gigs of RAM. The Commodore 64 encouraged people to explore and experiment. I didn't develop any interesting software, but I did write some simple programs and became a MODEM master.

[@marklloyd1480]

I wrote a BASIC expansion for the Commodore 64. You could really get a lot in 8KB.

[@randomgeocacher]

OS/2 was my first full preemptive multitasking OS, so it had a special place in my heart. Such a difference from Windows95 where basically { halt; jmp $-1 } was all you needed to 99% hang the OS. But I never got a hang of which OS/2 settings interacted with DOS performance, so I reverted back to Windows 95 to make my BBS users happy. Windows 2000 was the first Windows OS that seemed to truly be able to multitask for real and have a good user interface, which probably killed off OS/2. And better application compatibility. So since Windows 2000 I’ve considered windows pretty mature.

[@rfvtgbzhn]

you could crash Windows 9x by typing for example c:\con\con in a run windows or DOS prompt.

[@ChrisTexan]

So cool to have BeOS on the list! Such a totally AMAZING system. Supported petabyte file storage. I demo'ed it for my mom (a developer) on a PII-266, running 9 simultaneous AVI files with audio, no glitches, no drops, flawless (Windows on that same PC (setup as dual-boot), couldn't run 2 without dropouts). Really hoped it would go somewhere (I still have my copy), I actually ran my personal website on it for a few years off a Pentium MMX 166 NEC Laptop. I think besides the business decisions, one other issue against it, was it was very "single-user" oriented when both Mac and Windows were clearly moving into networked, centralized user managed compatible environments. I know BeOS could sort of manage things in that area, but it was more of an after-thought on the last boxed copy of BeOS, more of a super-powered workstation type OS for completing powerful projects for a given user, IMO. Still was so slick.

[@kluzz]

"Please say BeOS, please say BeOS, please say BeOS... Yes!!! BeOS!!"

[@PauloSilva111]

and haiku!

[@lsorense]

Boy was Apple lucky they didn't buy beos. They ended up with something much better instead.

[@ShamrockParticle]

@@lsorense today isn't April 1st, MacOS X is a souped up FreeBSD with bits of NEXT instead. Which is still good but BeOS as MacOS X would have been truly fantastic.

[@lsorense]

@@ShamrockParticle having used beos on a bebox quite a bit I was not impressed. Next step is a better os.

[@jesdadotcom]

I used to run BeOS Central. Those were good times.

[@markusTegelane]

My favorite OS of all time is Windows XP, specifically service pack 2 and later. Back when it was supported, it was reliable and just worked. It wasn't bloated and you actually had much more customization options, compared to newer Windows versions. It was also the first operating system I used and it took a while before I moved to Windows 7 in 2014 (yes, I skipped Vista, don't hate)

[@paulluce2557]

Vista was just horrible..

[@neoqueto]

In my opinion the biggest drawback to XP was the lack of proper 64-bit driver and software support. The 64-bit edition just wasn't fleshed out. Edit: I'm sorry of course I meant Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, NOT 64-bit edition (which was exclusive to IA64)

[@paulluce2557]

@@neoqueto That's when MS decided to dump that abomination called Vista upon the world...

[@brostenen]

Vista was good. If you had the hardware for it to run well. Same story with WinME. You had to have powerfull hardware, that was build for it. WinXP was ok. Win7 was just created for the user, with the help of the user. Hence 7 being better than XP. However. I too have switched to Linux exclusively. I tested tons of Linux distro's between 1995 and 2016. I finally decided to switch fully in 2016, because they had announced Win7 end of life. Actually I had the idea for a year or something. Because of that EOL announcement. I must have had like 50 different flavour tested through the years. Personally I am a Debian guy. I just want my Linux to be Debian or Debian based. Then I am good and happy enough.

[@Momentvm]

@@brostenen In fact, I had a custom PC on which the only pre-NT Windows that would be stable (actually *very* stable) was WinME. And then along came XP, which was excellent.

[@ccudmore]

I'll add to the list of people who say that OS/2 should have been on this list. OS/2 ushered in the era of Client-Server software where the desktop PC wasn't used just for word processing and spreadsheets. It allowed businesses to harness their back-end servers and present it in a user-friendly, powerful and stable interface. Many bank machines ran OS/2 as did in-branch banking applications. It allowed Enterprise-grade software applications on a personal computer for the first time - not just sharing files in a workgroup.

[@williamhoodtn]

Love the hoodie! Being a former Commodore HW engineer during the A3000 years, you suckered me in. LOL.

[@repostor]

I loved the hw in Amiga, the GUI And not the least the multi tasking operating system

[@AlanW]

I worked at Be for a spell, nice coverage of it. Those office shots brought some nostalgia!

[@wildstar1063]

I think you left out that Amiga OS had its own version of plug-and-play years before Bill gates announced it like it was something new. The AmigaOS is my favorite operating system as well. I have an old Amiga 3000 Tower and several 4000s still, and they are much more fun to use then even my Macintosh computers.

[@MichaelPohoreski]

ProDOS (1983) had Plug-n-Play before AmigaOS (1985). Software would scan the first few bytes of firmware to determine what slot the card was in. Technically, the Apple 2 had the first version with the Disk Drive firmware being slot agnostic. But yeah MS was always ripping off others.

[@xuser48]

Instead of Windows 95 you have had OS/2. Windows 95 was just another GUI addon to DOS. OS/2 was a full Object Oriented OS. It used PostScript fonts on the GUI. It supported different fonts in each window, different colours, different backgrounds and it was all drag'n'drop. And it had the option of making a folder a Workplace, which meant that when you opened that folder everything in it opened as well. And when you closed that folder everything that was opened from that folder was closed again. So if you had a folder with software development tools you didn't need to start all the tools separately, you just made the containing folder a Workplace. The Task list was a bit special too. You could multiselect running tasks with the mouse or the keyboard and terminate them with the 'Delete'-key.

[@michaelcopple1736]

I love the hoodie, Dan! That takes me back to my youth. The C64 was big when I was just going into middle-school. We used those in 6th grade. Crazy.

[@JaminWarrenPMS]

No TempleOS on the list? Unsubbed lol

[@rollopestershank4666]

LOL

[@danielhilton7623]

Templeos is crap I hope you are kidding

[@bjarnestronstrup9122]

@@danielhilton7623 TempleOS requires its users to poses Divine Intellect which I am sure you don't.

[@_xndrzt]

@@danielhilton7623 you must be a CIA agent.

[@imnotfuckingusingthisaccou2574]

@@danielhilton7623 No matter how much you hate it, you have to appreciate that a single man built it all by himself: the kernel, the games, the programming language, etc

[@quickhakker]

The funny part is if you don't disagree with the list you still disagree with a part of the video about disagreeing with the video

[@cwdrock]

I disagree.

[@simonhadley8829]

I worked in an air force unit that used Windows 3.11 on one of their systems right up till early 2015. It was a stand alone used to run some DAT voice recorders and the only place I could still play Mine Sweeper and Solitaire anywhere on base.

[@picklerism]

I think your list is pretty accurate - I especially agree with you about Amiga OS being miles ahead of the competition with preemptive multitasking... such a pitty Commodore management at the time couldn't organise a pissup at a brewery.

[@quantumleaper]

Commodore USA was the one who couldn't get anything right, and Europe was the one who ran the company well. If Commodore Europe were the ones in charge, Commodore might still be around today, but they were not. I still like the story that Commodore brass said at the CES or some other show that the 128 was going to have a memory expansion unit, without telling the Engineers who worked at Commodore about the announcement. They found out at the same time as the public did.

[@picklerism]

@@quantumleaper Yes! Sorry - you are absolutely correct.

[@psyionx]

11:43 In the 90s CD-ROM can read upside down cd! Lol

[@TechRyze]

That's clearly the localised Australian version of Windows 95

[@StompySan]

I literally only disagree with some of the ordering. This list rounds out my exact feelings on operating systems across the board objectively. Now, I have my "guilty pleasure" OSes. I know I shouldn't like Windows Me. Nostalgia is a hell of a thing though. I remember sitting with my grandfather, on Black Friday, eagerly awaiting the install to complete, just to then spend a total of seven hours and hundreds of dollars on phone support to get it up and running. I think I primarily have Me to thank for me being in the IT support industry, because I remember the absolute nightmare we went through, and never wanted anyone else to go through that. That's why I love it.

[@Karreth]

I really like Windows Me too. There are dozens of us.

[@danbrisson432]

I agree with your list 80%. 2 examples is we still use Windows 2000. It sits upon an Open VMS system that runs a Wastewater Treatment Facility. This system runs 1000’s of pieces of machinery. Second I agree with the Amiga OS. You can run Dos5.0, and Mac OS on it. It was truly multitasking. We ran a program called “ National Debt Calculator” in 50 different instances and they ran independently without ‘catching up’ to the same number. On the 3.1 Windows system they eventually recorded the same number. You should do one on 3 favorite processors given year of use. Ex. The 600xx family and the 65xx family. Or Xeon vs Thread ripper in a modern scenario. Great Vid!

[@teebes2009]

Sorry, 2 years late here. In the 80s I wrote programs for VMS on VAX systems, usually in Pascal and sometimes C. I had some training from Digital Equipment too. In my experience it was rock solid. I had 2 shelves of OS manuals and if you followed the manuals you could make calls and receive expected results every single time. I even wrote a primitive form of objects using the form system for a project. I kept a list of information for each form in a structured format. Then I called my code passing the structure for the form I wanted as the parameter. It worked every time. The only issue I ever had was with the Pascal compiler. I had to disable optimization a couple of times as it optimized out some logic I needed. Fun times!

[@WarrenGarabrandt]

Ok, that data type feature of amiga os is possibly the most fascinating and useful feature I've ever heard of in my life, and I'm disappointed that Windows doesn't have a similar feature built in. Windows has something similar, kind of. You can install codes to allow playback of new video and audio files, but that only works for certain container formats.

[@VintageForYou]

My favorite OS of all time as got to be Windows XP of all the windows operating systems I started with the Amiga OS as my first.

[@Psi-Storm]

XP used the basis of 2k with some upgrades to the ui to make it more end user friendly and much cheaper ($300 for a win2k professional license, vs $99 for an upgrade license to xp). The big milestone was Win 2k which made the whole system so much more stable compared to the old windows versions that were still based on ms dos.

[@ThePhilGrimm]

@@Psi-Storm "All roads lead to Cairo" was the quote I remember and Cairo was the universal kernal for all Windows PCs. DOS, 3.1, W95, W98, WME on one stream and the various iterations of WNT followed by W2000 on the other. XP was when they came together and the one I stuck with for the longest time.

[@eelcosterringa1374]

Windows 2000 = Windows 5.0 while Windows XP = Windows 5.1 and it is a further development and multiple versions of Windows 9x not being seperately listed. I truly loved Windows 2000 and I used it the longest ever. But in the early beginnings it was difficult because of lacking device drivers (developers could no longer do their dirty tricks under water). In the Final service pack 2000 was virtually the same as the back then XP. For me missing in this list is Android. The importance being that IT truly unfolded portable computing and most users no longer need a pc at home any more.

[@AlexSmith-fs6ro]

2k is for me.

[@brianvogt8125]

I agree with XP, not because it was innovative, but because it ironed the bugs out of Win 2000. Finally, PnP worked reliably. BSOD almost never occurs. XP is such a pleasure to use, that most customers refused to "upgrade" until Microsoft provided a cheap slide across to Win 8 (and then a free slide to Win 10). Everything from Win 7 has been a downgrade. Win 10 is bloated like Vista was - old laptops are slowed to a crawl. I still keep a Win XP desktop system handy for using my old HP scanner, because HP refused to provide any updated drivers.

[@Uniblab8]

I had forgotten how advanced AMIGA OS was back in the da. NeXT is impressive as well but I never knew a lot about that one.

[@american6183]

wow, didnt know amiga was so advanced. The file compatibility thing is a struggle, even today. How many things still can't display .png!

[@captbloodbeard]

My favorite thing about Amiga OS was that if it detected the system was going to crash, it would be kind enough to let you know to save your work first. How the hell it did that, I don't know, but I've always been miffed that Windows never did that.

[@JuliusCesar2781]

@@captbloodbeard Amiga has had the "Guru Meditation" that tells you what had happen. So when I'm programming in Asembler, I alwasy know what had happen. I loved programming the 68000 processor. It was easy to do. The 86x processors are bullshit.

[@TomCee53]

Actually, I have no complaints with your list. Thanks for the historical survey. I’d like to hear your take on business systems, as well, since I spent almost 40 years working on everything from mainframes to desktops. My favorites include VM/370, VMS, and Solaris, as well as several flavors of Unix.

[@pillettadoinswartsh4974]

Mac OS 10 started with the fastest land animal (Cheetah) and the felines just kept getting slower and slower and slower. I was half expecting 10.9 to be called "Calico."

[@joeshmoe7967]

They kinda hosed themselves with naming convention, no doubt, but Tiger and Leopard were really good. Headed down hill after that.

[@beardyface8492]

NT4 deserved a place, the first Windows version that combined stability with a friendly UI.

[@AeroModule]

I recently got NT4 running in VirtualBox and was trying to remember why it didn't replace Win95 for me back in the day. NT4 was a great OS, but then I recalled that it couldn't run games because I think it didn't support DirectX. Couldn't run DOS games at all like, Quake. But I did just reinstall Win7 on my home server and used Prairie Wind.bmp for the wallpaper :) Brings back great memories of winter 96/97.

[@allenjenkins7947]

@@AeroModuleThe main reason that NT4 didn't run games well, if at all, was that MS were pushing a split between a professional/business operating system and a home/student one. Perhaps the other reason that NT4 wasn't so popular was that it could be a bit tricky to configure. I ran NT4 systems at work, but Win95/98 at home and found both best suited the environment. As the system manager/administrator in a large scientific research organization I had to provide a lot more hands-on support for NT4 and 2000 than for previous OS's - and my users were all PhDs or graduate engineers and scientists. So no dummies.

[@TechRyze]

Allen Jenkins Yep - it was horrible to configure. It was pretty much under construction, though, and Win95, 98...2000 then XP evolved the GUI features until the point where it was polished. NT had the stability, but the UI/UX wasn’t quite there yet.

[@Arnaud58]

With a lot of effort you could get it running alright. But it remains NEANDERTHAL TECHNOLOGY...

[@repostor]

Windows NT was developed by developer that left Digital VMS, and there are jokes about the name selection what comes after V in VMS -> W what comes after M in VMS -> N what comes after S in VMS -> T what would that be Windows NT hahaha

[@stephenbruce8320]

I don't have a favorite OS I happen to have an appreciation for many and so I continue to used old and new operating systems.

[@jefftank3300]

I am glad to see Windows 95 there. IMO, it is greatly underappreciated. Many people compare it to now, but of course, it is worse based on security ease of use, and other features of today. It needs to be compared to its predessessors. IMO, the greatest relief that 95 provided was doing away with the 8.3 file naming. Imagine trying to organize your media libraries using the 8.3 naming scheme.

[@xenxander]

And I liked "Norton Commander", personally.

[@honolulublues5548]

I used to use that on my 286. Although, not really an OS as it was more of a file manager on top of MS-DOS. But, you probably knew that and were just being funny.

[@AnGhaeilge]

Been following for years, glad to see you're finally almost at that 50k mark! Keep up the great work Dan, as a former Amiga owner - I've loved your videos over the years.

[@rchandraonline]

I'd say, very difficult to argue with the reach, the depth, the diversity, of Linux. Most certainly #1.

[@imnotfuckingusingthisaccou2574]

GNU/Linux*

[@jeremypnet]

Very easy to argue against it. At the beginning he says he focuses on personal computer operating systems. Linux is nowhere on PCs and never has been.

[@TomChaton]

@@jeremypnet He says "my personal favourite operating systems" easy mistake to make.

[@jeremypnet]

@@TomChaton he definitely limits the scope to Personal computers generally.

[@imnotfuckingusingthisaccou2574]

@@jeremypnet Shut the fuck up. I run gnu/linux on my pc and it's good. In fact, lots of people run gnu/linux on their pcs. Gnu/linux IS on pcs and it wouldn't take long to search for desktop linux-based oses.

[@zincChameleon]

Agree on 2. I still use Windows 2000 on a 20-year-old Acer laptop with 128 MRAM. Still fast, but better yet, a simple interface.

[@penguinjoe1961]

I agree with your choice of AmigaOS. For me the top OS is OS/2 which at the time was leaps and bounds beyond anything available from Microsoft at the time (there was no Linux). Both for development as well as rock solid stability and versatility it was a game changer. With version 3.0 it ran 32-bit applications before Windows NT was available. It's presentqaion manager was a pleasure to develop code for. The failing grace of OS/2 was the Enterprise-oriented marketing by IBM - something IBM was very strong in. They had no idea how to market their product to the home consumer, while Microsoft had huge experience selling to the home user with it's DOS and Windows 3.x platforms. They managed to out-hype IBM when marketing Windows 95 even though OS/2 was superior to Windows 95 in every way. While IBM was busy courting the banks and industries of the time, Microsoft was busy encouraging developers to create Win-95 applications which left OS/2 with very little commercial software in the various Brick & Mortar stores (internet-based stores didn't exist). Had IBM been a little more consumer-conscious the OS tapestry would look very different today - but they dropped the ball and Microsoft was swift in picking it up. The biggest laugh over the whole thing is that the kernel of OS/2 was co-developed between Microsoft and IBM, and was used as the basis of Windows NT. Where they diverged of course is with the GUI system - IBM had Presentation Manager, Microsoft had it Windows.

[@LEVELMotorsports]

I would have picked a newer version of OSX, even though I have a dual G4 PowerMac that's running Tiger and I don't want to update it because it still has that OS9 backwards compatibility. Other than that I think you nailed this list. So glad to see that Be was included. I actually used that back in the day and loved it. Linux at #1 is dead on.

[@richsmart321]

Linux as an OS is too broad that’s like saying Windows is the best operating system

[@ccat342]

well, just fill in the distro of your choice and there you go ... linux at no. 1

[@haywoodjablowme4601]

BeOS and QNX (not mentioned) were top tier OS' for sure with QNX still in use, in fact powering major ISP switches as the backbone.

[@nicolast39]

I completely agree with that list. I personally have not used every os on that list, I can see each oses impact. Good job forming that list. Keep up the great work. You earned yourself another shb

[@aw34565]

No love for Atari TOS / Tramiel Operating System then Dan?

[@londongaz2]

Agreed. Big fan of GEM here!

[@judewestburner]

To many flies and bombs 😄😄

[@ShamrockParticle]

@@judewestburner that was old MacOS.

[@judewestburner]

@@ShamrockParticle quite true

[@TheJeremyHolloway]

@@londongaz2 I loved GEM. Well, on the Atari ST. DRI's GEM on x86 was so weak in comparison. I'm not sure that was due to DRI not being as clever as Atari Corp's ex-Atari Inc programmers who improved their version of GEM or it being due to the crippling legal settlement DRI signed with Apple.

[@RainerK.]

AmigaOS... Still sad that I had to let it go, kept it until I had to switch to PC in 98.

[@khathmandu]

Although I have worked on ALL of the OSes mentioned(and associated hardware), I purchased the AmigaOS(with Amiga 3000 and 3000T) in 1990 and it will forever be my favorite OS..I still have the working hardware packed somewhere in my garage...unfortunately, it will not survive my next move...

[@RainerK.]

@@khathmandu I had gotten rid of my old, trusty A500 when I moved, but have since bought an A600 and A1200 that I will upgrade and never give away again. Back in the 90s I learned how to program on the Amiga, first in GFA Basic and then in C. The OS was really nice and had pretty cool features for its time.

[@OninDynamics]

Number 1: "Let me interject for a moment..."

[@meowcula]

ah so many OSes I have used and missed! I used to love Be, and AmigaOS. Love your choice of Tiger! that was my daily driver for years and years. Admittedly, OSX has not progressed in many meaningful ways since. I'd say it peaked about Mountain Lion, then it was diminishing returns. Looking forward to building a new linux-first machine next.

[@ogdenvonkol5014]

I still have my OS 2 warp.... and still loving it!

[@juzujuzu4555]

I was so scared that there wouldn't be Linux in the top 1. Though I could have accepted AmigaOS for Nr.1 as in many ways that's the most impressive OS of it's time. I could still be really happy with it. But nothing beats Linux. I first saw it in 1994 Assembly demo party, couple months after 1.0 release. I remember thinking it looked great, but was really slow. And I thought it has no change of getting anywhere.

[@joegee2815]

I installed 1.0, downloaded it onto floppy disks. It was the Slackware distribution. Was a pain to get the graphics sorted, today it's one of the easiest installs of any operating system out there.

[@shanehebert396]

I first started using Linux when it was beta kernels. You'd almost always have to recompile the kernel to support the hardware you had in the machine and that would take a good amount of time.

[@TheErador]

@@shanehebert396 ugh I don't miss that! Still occasionally have to compile a kernel mod, but mostly they're abstracted away with DKMS doing the hard work.

[@347573]

Before viewing it I was thinking that it would be mission impossible to make such a list and properly sustain it with real content, but you did... bravo!

[@joehoisington7761]

I'm glad you mentioned GeoWorks. The first full PC I had growing up was a 386SX25 that came preinstalled with it. We switched to Windows 3.1 eventually, but I had never seen GeoWorks on another computer. Prior to that we had a Commodore 128; curious if not a lot of people had it, I never hear it referred to anywhere on the web.

[@bratticuss]

Windows 2000 also introduced Active Directory too.

[@BigMacIIx]

You' ve got a great list, if I consider the most influential OS, Bell Labs Unix should be in the list along with Xero Alto Exec.

[@harrybarrow6222]

Absolutely! Unix (still around) is the grandfather of all the -ix and -ux OSs. I used Unix before Windows (and the Xerox Alto) existed. It is extremely clean and compact, designed to run in less than 64KB. That is KB, not MB or GB! And fast on a 1uS cycle minicomputer. Modern software is languid mega-bloatware in comparison.

[@zf4hp24]

Ever hear of IBM Z/OS and Z/VM? You know, the operating systems that pioneered just about everything you use today?

[@BigMacIIx]

@@zf4hp24 I haven't heard much about those and was more a PDP-11 VAX/VMS guys back then ;-)

[@zf4hp24]

@@BigMacIIx Not picking on you, Etienne ;^). It's amazing how few folks know anything that predates Steve, Bill and Linus. And the products Xerox PARC produced are still monumental (WYSIWYG, Ethernet, Postscript, Smalltalk). I was lucky to be a Xerox STAR beta tester.

[@BigMacIIx]

@@zf4hp24 Wow I envy you, I never got the chance to use a Xerox computer. Xerox Parc pretty much "invent" all the tech we still use today, to bad Steves Jobs got away with this ;-)

[@artisan002]

Just now found this. One of my all-time favorite operating systems is Domain/OS. A lot about it wasn't that different from Unix/BSD. But, it had one key trick up it's sleeve that made it indispensable in select environments: Distributed compute. I've only briefly poked around on a Domain/OS system. But, both of my cyber security instructors were relative veterans. One of them worked for an industrial manufacturing company at the time, and noted how their simulation of waves affecting a floating oil rig utilized every free CPU cycle on the floor and saturated the network. Granted, we're talking 1997, here. But, still! It's a brilliant thing we really need again, in this day and age.

[@bobgreene2892]

Surprisingly, I found your Top Ten line-up persuasive. Thank for the research behind it. (I subscribed.)

[@TheDustin151]

I don't know if I have a top 10 but my favorites are Windows 7 and XP, Mac OS Mojave and Snow Leopard and Linux Mint and Peppermint Linux. Thats just me. Thanks.

[@GospelTheGrey]

There was even a CP/M cartridge with a built-in Z80 processor for Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer 2.

[@andypandy9013]

I used to run an independent computer shop in the Midlands and can tell you that you missed one. Sort of. Twenty odd years ago we would load Win 98 SE then load the Win Me upgrade disc onto our machines. That gave the basic half decent core of Win 98 SE but with the extras of Win Me like System Restore. Worked for us!

[@josephgaviota]

It's hard for young people to remember a time when your computer could run only ONE application at a time. You could run a word processor. Or a graphics program. I remember when "MultiFinder" came out, and you could run MULTIPLE programs at the same time! Dan mentions having to wait while your word processor prints ... we had "print spoolers," small hardware that'd suck up the whole print job, releasing your computer, while your dot-matrix printer zzzzrp zzzzrp zzzzzrp grinded out your print job. One last thing ... in the old days, you couldn't "copy/paste" even _text_ between applications. What a treat it was when _that_ became possible!

[@mrbrad4637]

GEOS is amazing, I still remember the first time I loaded it up as a primary school kid in the 80s and thinking it was an amazing operating system, I think I compared it to apples latest GUI at the time and infact it was arguably better than windows of the time and came with its own office apps that rivaled ms Office of the time as well.. all this on a 1mhz 64kb ram system.. infact I find GEOS makes a Commodore 64 just as useable if not more so than a 286 with Windows 3.1 and early MS Office... amazing programming from those at Berkeley software.. As far as my favourite OS nowadays is Windows.. yes I've tried and played with Linux but day to day Windows 10 works for me and they have brought across the best of both worlds now with WSL, windows snap to corners and multiple desktops along with fastboot.. Windows just works and looks nice with the default themes and colours

[@quantumleaper]

Geos64 was a great OS but GeoPublish was very show unless you had an REU or RamLink.

[@CelentAle]

I love AmigaOS4 and architecture different from all other OS! 💪 👍

[@spodula]

The fact you can put someone in front of it today, and they can use it without too much difficulty shows you how advanced it was for its time. Also, speaking as someone who has had to put together a lot of Sysadmin scripts recently, there are times over the last month, i would have Loved to have AmigaDos ASSIGN command's ability to add folders together and remove them again at a whim.

[@TheErador]

@@spodula probably can do that with union fs in Linux if i remember how it works right

[@chrisbaum3871]

@@spodula assign is a beast of a command and it makes it possible to check a drives structure on hd before you write it on a media.in reverse you can copy a media to hd and assign the correct drive letters. in the 90s i copied all ADos floppies to hd and used a script on demand to assign the disks to the folders.

[@nelackey]

My heart was broken when BeOS was discontinued but I'm pleased to find that MX Linux meets all my needs.

[@snoopysnacks]

Love that hoodie! I spent many hours learning BASIC on the C-64 way back in the day. I had the disk drive as well. 😎

[@sandro5535]

Linux is even easier to install than Windows for the most part (such as Mint as he showed in video). No serial number to enter. Surprised to not hear Windows 7 at all

[@antonnym214]

Something this subjective, you don't have to have total agreement. It's STILL hyper-interesting. I liked CP/M for pure stability, which even extended to the multi-user version, MPM2. It's hard to disagree with GEOS, which I believe predated Windows and Mac. As for Win95's rudimentary (at best) plug and play, we computer professionals referred to it as "Plug and Pray"

[@SusloNick]

NeXT and Amiga were 10 years ahead of its time, its a tragedy they had lost and MS won setting back technological progress a whole decade back if not more

[@lcarliner]

What LInux needs for it to become more widespread in its adoption is for "the Bourne shell to be given the 'bum's rush', C-Shell to exiled to the C-shore", and the Korn cut, and a replacement that is far more intuitive and free of cryptic mixed case notation, but support all of the ingenious innovations like pipes and filters, as well as rework of utilities like Grep and Awk to reflect the rework. BTW, maybe Microsoft's Powershell could be adapted to be an alternative.

[@ericpmoss]

Those M$ ads proved Jobs' opinion that "they just have no taste."

[@Psych0technic]

Mac os whole gui is an example of bad taste.

[@jgarbo3541]

Gates is a carpetbagger, always was a sneaky pilferer.

[@googleisshittoss]

Windows 7...end of. Works brilliantly, always.

[@TechRyze]

Wonderful for its time, from 2009 until pretty much 2019. It's Windows 95+2000+... VISTA done right. With modern PCs competing amongst smartphones and tablets, some of Windows 10's features were absolutely needed, without the poor desktop UX of Windows 8. Windows 10 was a bit of a mess for its first year, though, and was tarnished by the experience of Windows 8. Then there are the privacy and system update annoyances These things mean that a lot of people find it hard to love.

[@johnnyrosenberg9522]

Used it at work. Hated it. Now we use Windows 10 and I hate that even more. Fortunately I don't use Windows at all at home since 2007, so I'm quite happy with my life anyway. 🤣

[@andrewwebb4635]

W7 just went on reliably for years and years. It was too good for its own sake in throw-away capitalism. Now we have w10 which seems to involve weekly fiddles and restarts. Sad!

[@Revener666]

@@TechRyze They removed almost all the UI customization that they had for years though with Win 10. It is really annoying not being able to set the colours as I want them. White is to hards on the eyes as default background coour and black s too dark, I´ve used grey since I started using computer. They even disabled the reg edit changes that I had to use in win8.,

[@acos21]

I was able to stretch Win7 usage to the beginning of 2020. Had to switch to 10 after too many incompatibility problems. Took some time to fine-tune 10 but must say its as stable and basically identical to win7 now. Before 7 i used windows 2000. I work as a developer at least 10 hours a day. Have been doing so for the last 2 decades. Only reboot once every 3 weeks. Windows really doesnt suck as much as people claim.

[@Diggnuts]

My favourite OSX remains Snow Leopard 10.6.8. Still have a machine set up with it as a retro mac.

[@farwestern99]

Snow Leopard is my choice for the most stable retail OS ever. Everything before and after never quite achieved this pinnacle.

[@alberttenfoot]

Hi, Dan! Just browsing KZbin and discovered your channel. I started with an IBM compatible with /dos 3.1 and a graphic Menu system called Menu. The Microsoft 3.1 came out, and I shuddered and went out and bought myself an Acorn A5000 running RISC OS 3.1. Used that until the RiscPC come out, upgraded to RISC OS and continued using it after Acorn was sold and s third party obtained the licence to sell computers under the brand name. By that time the Internet had taken off and developers for RISC OS were painfully slow in developing a good browser. Eventually, after about 15 years with the OS I abandoned it for Linux. Started with openSUSE, then Ubuntu and eventually Linux Mint v3.1. Other than doing some distro hopping, Mint has been my daily driver ever since. Which brings me to the question: Why isn't RISC OS mentioned in your video?

[@hex07ff]

I would add OS/2 Warp to the list. Other than that it’s perfect!!!

[@marcelbruinsma]

(Open)VMS with DCL ;)

[@grey5626]

Please, no. The worst CLI I have used that professed to be multi-user and multi-tasking. The "spawn" feature was no where nearly as powerful as a csh job control. Absolutely overpriced trash, which also begat more overpriced trash in the form of Windows NT from the same over privileged dullards.

[@telemachin]

I was a BeOS reseller. ( sold 2) BeOS was 15 years ahead.

[@SalvoDan]

Haiku is an open source reimplementation of BeOS, designed to be binary compatible. www.haiku-os.org/ It is an almost perfect reproduction of the BeOS we all know and loved, but it hasn’t aged well. While it has scaled well to modern hardware, and is just as efficient, it still has those late 1990s sensibilities which make it a retro OS. Although document-centric UIs are superior to application-centric UIs for power users, smartphone OSs have made the concept so alien that most users wouldn’t know how to take advantage. Windows 10 Explorer and MacOS Finder are so clunky and “dumbed down” that the whole paradigm has been inaccessible. Krusader and Nautilus are just as bad; attempting to emulate Explorer rather than empower users like early Linux endowment managers with built in file managers like Enlightenment, or GNUStep UIs like WindowMaker. They are also unmarketable because third-party software developers want to be a front end product, rather than a back-end feature. OS venders struggle to accomodate these sort of developers.