OSdata.com

Age

See also history for a general history of operating systems.

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)^e84

1977

VAX/VMS First VAX Ship date (October)^e84

1978

VMS V1.0 (August)^e84

1983

AmigaOS^e62

1984

ULTRIX^e100

Macintosh (January)

1985

AmigaOS 1.0 (October)^e95

1986

HP-UX^w24

1987

OS/2 1.0 (December)^e99

1993

FreeBSD 1.0 (December)^w48

1995

BeOS (October)^e79

If you know of any additional release dates, please let Milo know.

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)^e84

1977

VAX/VMS First VAX Ship date (October)^e84

1978

VMS V1.0 (August)^e84

1980

VMS V2.0 (April)^e84

1982

VMS V3.0 (April)^e84

1983

VMS VAXCLUSTERS announced^e84

AmigaOS 1.0^e62

1984

ULTRIX V1.0^e100

Macintosh (January)

VMS V4.0 (September)^e84

MicroVMS announced with VAX/VMS 4.0 (December)^e84

1985

VMS V4.2^e84

AmigaOS 1.0 (October)^e95

1986

VMS V4.4^e84

MicroVMS retired with VAX/VMS 4.4 (December)^e84

HP-UX 1.0^w24

VMS V4.7^e84

1987

OS/2 1.0 (December)^e99

HP-UX 1.1^w24

HP-UX 1.2^w24

1988

VMS V5.0 (May)^e84

HP-UX 2.0^w24

HP-UX 2.1^w24

HP-UX 3.0^w24

1989

VMS V5.2 (September)^e84

HP-UX 3.1^w24

HP-UX 7.0^w24

1990

VMS V5.4 (October)^e84

AIX 3.0^e67

HP-UX 7.02^w24

HP-UX 7.06^w24

HP-UX 7.08^w24

1991

VMS V5.5 (November)^e84

VMS V5.5-1 (November)^e84

VMS V5.5-2 (November)^e84

OpenVMS name change of VMS to OpenVMS^e84

HP-UX 8.0^w24

HP-UX 8.01^w24

HP-UX 8.02^w24

HP-UX 8.06+^w24

HP-UX 8.06^w24

HP-UX 8.05^w24

HP-UX 8.07^w24

1992

OpenVMS Alpha V1.0; based on VAX/VMS 5.4 (November)^e84

HP-UX 9.0^w24

HP-UX 9.01^w24

1993

BSDi BSD/OS initial production release (March)^w71

OpenVMS VAX V6.0 (June)^e84

FreeBSD 1.0 (December)^w48

OpenVMS ALPHA V1.5^e84

HP-UX 9.02^w24

HP-UX 9.03^w24

1994

OpenVMS VAX 6.1 (April)^e84

OpenVMS ALPHA 6.1 (May)^e84

FreeBSD 1.1 (May)^w48

HP-UX 9.04^w24

HP-UX 9.05^w24

1995

FreeBSD 2.0 (January)^w48

OpenVMS VAX 6.2 (May)^e84

OpenVMS ALPHA 6.2 (June)^e84

FreeBSD 2.0.5 (June)^w48

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).”^e79

ULTRIX V4.5 (November)^e100

OpenVMS 7.0 (December)^e84

HP-UX 9.07^w24

HP-UX 10.0^w24

HP-UX 10.01^w24

1996

BeOS Dr6 (developer release): (January)^e79

BeOS Dr7 (developer release): (April)^e79

FreeBSD 2.1.5 (August)^w48

BeOS Dr8 (developer release): (September)^e79

OS/2 4.0 (September)^e99

FreeBSD 2.2 (November) — “branched from the development mainline”^w48

OpenVMS 7.1 (December)^e84

HP-UX 10.10^w24

HP-UX 10.20^w24

1997

FreeBSD 2.1.7.1 (February) — “end of mainstream development on 2.1-stable”^w48

FreeBSD 2.2.1 (April) — “first full release of 2.2 [series]”^w48

BeOS Advanced Access Preview Release: (May)^e79

BeOS PR (preview release): (July)^e79

AIX 4.3 (October)^e67

BeOS PR2 (preview release): (October)^e79

HP-UX 10.30^w24

HP-UX 11.00^w24

1998

BeOS Release 3 for Intel x86: (March)^e79

BeOS Release 3 for PowerPC: (April)^e79

BeOS Release 3.1: (June)^e79

BeOS Release 3.2: (July)^e79

FreeBSD 2.2.7 (July)^w48

AIX 4.3.2 (October 5)^e86

Macintosh 8. 5 (October)

FreeBSD 3.0 (October) — “first official 3.0 release”^w48

FreeBSD 2.2.8 (November) — “the last release on the 2.2 branch”^w48

1999

AIX 4.3.3 (October)^e112

2000

Windows 2000 1.0 (February 17)^w50

HP-UX 11.11 (aka 11i)^e121

Macintosh OS X public beta (September 13)

2001

Macintosh OS X 10.0 (March 24)

If you know of any additional release dates, please let Milo know.

geek humor

“At least Pixar’s second film doesn’t have to be backward-compatible with the first.” —Steve Jobs

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