Old
and reliable
The
potential advantage of an older operating system is that it has had years of
heavy use that has led to greater dependability and fewer bugs and crashes.
Of course,
this only applies if the maker of the operating system has put effort into bug
fixes.
As an
example, the programmers working on LINUX
invest huge effort into ridding their operating system of even the smallest
bugs, while Microsoft (Windows) has
the policy of ignoring bug fixes unless the bugs affect a substantial
percentage of their customers. Some cynical observers believe that Microsoft
intentionally includes bugs to increase the profitability of their paid
technical support services.
Bill Gates, when questioned about the more
than 10,000 known bugs Microsoft acknowledged existed in Windows 98, claimed
“There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant
number of users want fixed.…The reason we come up with new versions is not to
fix bugs.…It’s the stupidest reason to buy a new version I ever heard.”
Another
potential advantage of an older operating system is the existence of a larger
library of available programs.
New
and advanced
The
potential advantage of a new operating system is that it can introduce
important new ideas or techniques without the "drag" of supporting
legacy software.
BeOS is an example of a new operating
system built with the specific intent of being able to incorporate all new
ideas and techniques.
NeXT is an example of an operating
system that is fairly old but has some of the most modern and advanced features
of any operating system available (especially Yellow Box, Web Objects, and
EOF). Rhapsody (also known as Mac OS X
Server) incorporates the dependability and new ideas of NeXT with the ideas
from the revolutionary Macintosh OS.
1.1 MB QuickTime movie of Bill Gates explaining his criteria for selecting the
best operating system.
(Transcribed below for those who don’t want to take the download time to see the video clip)
“To create a new standard, it takes something
that’s not just a little bit different, it takes something that’s really new
and really captures people’s imagination and the Macintosh, of all the machines
I’ve ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.” — Bill Gates
Initial
Release
The
following chart shows the release dates of the first version of each
listed operating system, with operating systems listed in chronological order:
1975
VAX/VMS
Conception (June)
1977
VAX/VMS
First VAX Ship date (October)
1978
VMS V1.0
(August)
1981
IBM-PC
(Apr 24)
PC-DOS 1.0
(Aug 12)
1983
Amiga OS
1984
ULTRIX
Macintosh
(January)
1985
Amiga OS
1.0 (October)
1986
HP-UX
1987
OS/2
(April 2)
OS/2 1.0
(December)
1993
FreeBSD
1.0 (December)
1995
BeOS
(October)
2002
Syllable
2003 (July)
2003
Windows
Server 2003 (April 24)
Release
dates
The
following chart shows the release dates of each version of each listed
operating system, in chronological order:
1975
VAX/VMS
Conception (June)
1977
VAX/VMS
First VAX Ship date (October)
1978
VMS V1.0
(August)
1980
VMS V2.0
(April)
1981
IBM-PC
(Apr 24)
1982
VMS V3.0
(April)
IBM PC-DOS
version 1.1 (May 7)
1983
VMS
VAXCLUSTERS announced
AmigaOS
1.0
1984
ULTRIX
V1.0
Macintosh
(January)
VMS V4.0
(September)
MicroVMS
announced with VAX/VMS 4.0 (December)
1985
VMS V4.2
AmigaOS
1.0 (October)
1986
VMS V4.4e84
MicroVMS
retired with VAX/VMS 4.4 (December)
HP-UX 1.0
VMS V4.7
1987
OS/2 1.0
(December)
HP-UX 1.1
HP-UX 1.2
1988
VMS V5.0
(May)
HP-UX 2.0
HP-UX 2.1
HP-UX 3.0
1989
VMS V5.2
(September)
HP-UX 3.1
HP-UX 7.0
1990
Windows
3.0 (May 22)
VMS V5.4
(October)
AIX 3.0
HP-UX 7.02
HP-UX 7.08
1991
VMS V5.5
(November)
VMS V5.5-1
(November)
VMS V5.5-2
(November)
OpenVMS
name change of VMS to OpenVMS
HP-UX 8.0
HP-UX 8.01
HP-UX 8.02
HP-UX
8.06+
HP-UX 8.06
HP-UX 8.05
HP-UX 8.07
1992
OpenVMS
Alpha V1.0; based on VAX/VMS 5.4 (November)
HP-UX 9.0
HP-UX 9.01
1993
BSDi
BSD/OS initial production release (March)
OpenVMS
VAX V6.0 (June)
FreeBSD
1.0 (December)
OpenVMS
ALPHA V1.5
HP-UX 9.02
HP-UX 9.03
1994
OpenVMS
VAX 6.1 (April)
OpenVMS
ALPHA 6.1 (May)
FreeBSD
1.1 (May)
HP-UX 9.04
HP-UX 9.05
1995
FreeBSD
2.0 (January)
OpenVMS
VAX 6.2 (May)
OpenVMS
ALPHA 6.2 (June)
FreeBSD
2.0.5 (June)
BeOS
(October), “Be publicly shows the BeOS for the first time. At that time, Be
builds a proprietary hardware called the BeBox (which is a dual PowerPC
machine, roughly a boosted PReP machine).”
ULTRIX
V4.5 (November)
OpenVMS
7.0 (December)
HP-UX 9.07
HP-UX 10.0
HP-UX
10.01
1996
BeOS Dr6
(developer release): (January)
BeOS Dr7
(developer release): (April)
FreeBSD
2.1.5 (August)
BeOS Dr8
(developer release): (September)
OS/2 4.0
(September)
FreeBSD
2.2 (November) — “branched from the development mainline”
OpenVMS
7.1 (December)
HP-UX
10.10
HP-UX
10.20
1997
FreeBSD
2.1.7.1 (February) — “end of mainstream development on 2.1-stable”
FreeBSD
2.2.1 (April) — “first full release of 2.2 [series]”
BeOS
Advanced Access Preview Release: (May)
BeOS PR
(preview release): (July)
AIX 4.3
(October)
BeOS PR2
(preview release): (October)
HP-UX
10.30
HP-UX
11.00w
1998
BeOS
Release 3 for Intel x86: (March)
BeOS
Release 3 for PowerPC: (April)
BeOS
Release 3.1: (June)
BeOS Release
3.2: (July)
FreeBSD
2.2.7 (July)
AIX 4.3.2
(October 5)
Macintosh
8. 5 (October)
FreeBSD
3.0 (October) — “first official 3.0 release”
FreeBSD
2.2.8 (November) — “the last release on the 2.2 branch”
1999
AIX 4.3.3
(October)
2000
Windows
2000 1.0 (February 17)
HP-UX
11.11 (aka 11i)
Macintosh OS
X public beta (September 13)
2001
Macintosh
OS X 10.0 (March 24)
2002
Syllable
2003 (July)
2003
Windows
Server 2003 (April 24)