This poll is to see what operating systems were most commonly used by our membership before Linux ?
Previous OS experience (BEFORE Linux)
(1) None - Linux was my first operation System
(2) MS-Windows product (Win3, Win9x, Win-NT, WinXP, Vista, Win7, Win-something)
(3) DOS (MS-DOS, or DR-DOS, or IBM-DOS, or Free-DOS, or other-DOS)
(4) Apple Lisa/MacIntosh
(5) Apple DOS
(6) IBM OS/2
(7) VMS or Unix derivative
(8) CP/M
(9) other Micro/Mini/Mainframe computer operating system (please specify)
(10) other and/or whats an operating system ?
You should be able to select AS MANY of the above as you like, as some of us used many different OS before Linux.
Note this is BEFORE Linux in general and NOT specific to openSUSE.
??? Before Linux you had Linux? That reads like a chicken before the egg reply and thats not what the poll is asking. Is there some wording in the poll that has confused you ?
Wow, I think this poll is going to cause people to show their ages around here
I started with a TRS-80 in elementary school (we only had a cassette drive for storage), then went to an Apple II, then an Atari 800XL (cassette drive – I thought I was REALLY COOL when I got a 5.25" Disk drive for that system!), then an Apple /// (yep, we beat it up to re-seat the loose chips per Apple’s Technical Bulletins!) with a whopping 5GB hard drive and a dot-matrix printer before going to college and starting with MVS / JCL and DEC’s VMS. VMS was actually my first exposure to the internet, using usenet news and ftp. About that time, I retired the Apple /// and started using an Apple Mac (with System 6) and was hooked – I’ve always said if it weren’t for Linux I’d be a Mac user. You know, I never even used a Windows computer until I entered the corporate world, where we used Windows 3.1, Windows NT 3.5.1, and lots and lots of UNIX. I suffered under Windows 3.1 for about a year until I changed jobs and sat down at my new desk with an X-Term connected to a Sequent Dynix machine (which had 10 whopping CPU’s – 486’s – and 256MB of RAM at the time). At some point I’ve used or administered all of the “Big Boy” UNIX operating systems. But since 1997, I’ve been 100% Linux on the desktop, while doing standard UNIX admin or database administration.
There are some OS’s and architectures that I miss – like the DEC Alpha – and some that I don’t – like TANDEM Guardian – but I grew up in an industry that was keen on trying anything and everything under the sun (no pun intended)
I advise my friends to use Mac’s and I run Windows in a VM when absolutely necessary…
Unfortunately I was limited to 10 selections when creating the poll, but you make a good point. I recall TRS-80 was incredibly popular around 1982 timeframe. And Atari, Commodore, Sinclair and other micros also very popular.
I confess when making up the poll, I was surprised by how many OS I had used before. As you note, … it will definitely show the age of some of us. …
Is this only for private systems or means “did you use” also professional ones. In the second case my list of answers will be longer then your list of poll possibilities lol!
IBM OS-370/VS release 1.6 (otherwise known as SVS)
IBM MVS
HDOS (Heathkit operating system)
CP/M
Unix (BSD 4.2 and 4.3
PC-DOS (the IBM labeled version of MSDOS)
OS/2
Windows 3.1, Windows 95
just Windows… started in 1995 with Windows 95, later on 98, NT 4.0, 2000, Me and XP. In private, during study and in the job. privately I started with 95. In the study I had to use 98 and NT, while a friend of me still had an old PC with Win 3.11 on it. He then upgraded to another old machine with 2000. Later on, I had Me and XP at home and 98 at work which then turned into XP which is still being used.
I more or less started with IBM 360 (What was the OS called?)
In my private area I got a Sharp MZ80K based on a Z80 8-bit microprocessor with Z80 assembler and Basic. To run Basic programs on it, the Basic interpreter had to be preloaded from a cassette recorder, taking up 16K of the 20K RAM (Did the OS have a name?). Things eased a bit when a 360 KByte 5.25" floppy disk came out.
Then came Atari with TOS/GEM, (and Pascal, Modula2) and a 10MB hard disk.
…then PC with IBM DOS, MS-DOS, Windows 3, Windows 9, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000 (still got it)
Shortly after I got involved with DOS, I was trained as a COBOL programmer, found a job as a programmer/sysadmin. We had an NCR 650 Tower running AT&T UNIX System V, with dumb terminals. Soon after I started the first PC’s entered the office, running DOS.
