Oldand reliable
Thepotential advantage of an older operating system is that it has had years ofheavy 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 bugfixes.
As anexample, the programmers working on LINUXinvest huge effort into ridding their operating system of even the smallestbugs, while Microsoft (Windows) hasthe policy of ignoring bug fixes unless the bugs affect a substantialpercentage of their customers. Some cynical observers believe that Microsoftintentionally includes bugs to increase the profitability of their paidtechnical support services.
Bill Gates, when questioned about the morethan 10,000 known bugs Microsoft acknowledged existed in Windows 98, claimed“There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significantnumber of users want fixed.…The reason we come up with new versions is not tofix bugs.…It’s the stupidest reason to buy a new version I ever heard.”
Anotherpotential advantage of an older operating system is the existence of a largerlibrary of available programs.
Newand advanced
Thepotential advantage of a new operating system is that it can introduceimportant new ideas or techniques without the "drag" of supportinglegacy software.
BeOS is an example of a new operatingsystem built with the specific intent of being able to incorporate all newideas and techniques.
NeXT is an example of an operatingsystem that is fairly old but has some of the most modern and advanced featuresof any operating system available (especially Yellow Box, Web Objects, andEOF). Rhapsody (also known as Mac OS XServer) incorporates the dependability and new ideas of NeXT with the ideasfrom the revolutionary Macintosh OS.
1.1 MB QuickTime movie of Bill Gates explaining his criteria for selecting thebest operating system.
(Transcribedbelow for those who don’t want to take the download time to see the video clip)
“To create a new standard, it takes somethingthat’s not just a little bit different, it takes something that’s really newand really captures people’s imagination and the Macintosh, of all the machinesI’ve ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.” — Bill Gates
InitialRelease
Thefollowing chart shows the release dates of the first version of eachlisted operating system, with operating systems listed in chronological order:
1975
VAX/VMSConception (June)
1977
VAX/VMSFirst 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 OS1.0 (October)
1986
HP-UX
1987
OS/2(April 2)
OS/2 1.0(December)
1993
FreeBSD1.0 (December)
1995
BeOS(October)
2002
Syllable2003 (July)
2003
WindowsServer 2003 (April 24)
Releasedates
Thefollowing chart shows the release dates of each version of each listedoperating system, in chronological order:
1975
VAX/VMSConception (June)
1977
VAX/VMSFirst 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-DOSversion 1.1 (May 7)
1983
VMSVAXCLUSTERS announced
AmigaOS1.0
1984
ULTRIXV1.0
Macintosh(January)
VMS V4.0(September)
MicroVMSannounced with VAX/VMS 4.0 (December)
1985
VMS V4.2
AmigaOS1.0 (October)
1986
VMS V4.4e84
MicroVMSretired 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
Windows3.0 (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)
OpenVMSname change of VMS to OpenVMS
HP-UX 8.0
HP-UX 8.01
HP-UX 8.02
HP-UX8.06+
HP-UX 8.06
HP-UX 8.05
HP-UX 8.07
1992
OpenVMSAlpha V1.0; based on VAX/VMS 5.4 (November)
HP-UX 9.0
HP-UX 9.01
1993
BSDiBSD/OS initial production release (March)
OpenVMSVAX V6.0 (June)
FreeBSD1.0 (December)
OpenVMSALPHA V1.5
HP-UX 9.02
HP-UX 9.03
1994
OpenVMSVAX 6.1 (April)
OpenVMSALPHA 6.1 (May)
FreeBSD1.1 (May)
HP-UX 9.04
HP-UX 9.05
1995
FreeBSD2.0 (January)
OpenVMSVAX 6.2 (May)
OpenVMSALPHA 6.2 (June)
FreeBSD2.0.5 (June)
BeOS(October), “Be publicly shows the BeOS for the first time. At that time, Bebuilds a proprietary hardware called the BeBox (which is a dual PowerPCmachine, roughly a boosted PReP machine).”
ULTRIXV4.5 (November)
OpenVMS7.0 (December)
HP-UX 9.07
HP-UX 10.0
HP-UX10.01
1996
BeOS Dr6(developer release): (January)
BeOS Dr7(developer release): (April)
FreeBSD2.1.5 (August)
BeOS Dr8(developer release): (September)
OS/2 4.0(September)
FreeBSD2.2 (November) — “branched from the development mainline”
OpenVMS7.1 (December)
HP-UX10.10
HP-UX10.20
1997
FreeBSD2.1.7.1 (February) — “end of mainstream development on 2.1-stable”
FreeBSD2.2.1 (April) — “first full release of 2.2 [series]”
BeOSAdvanced Access Preview Release: (May)
BeOS PR(preview release): (July)
AIX 4.3(October)
BeOS PR2(preview release): (October)
HP-UX10.30
HP-UX11.00w
1998
BeOSRelease 3 for Intel x86: (March)
BeOSRelease 3 for PowerPC: (April)
BeOSRelease 3.1: (June)
BeOS Release3.2: (July)
FreeBSD2.2.7 (July)
AIX 4.3.2(October 5)
Macintosh8. 5 (October)
FreeBSD3.0 (October) — “first official 3.0 release”
FreeBSD2.2.8 (November) — “the last release on the 2.2 branch”
1999
AIX 4.3.3(October)
2000
Windows2000 1.0 (February 17)
HP-UX11.11 (aka 11i)
Macintosh OSX public beta (September 13)
2001
MacintoshOS X 10.0 (March 24)
2002
Syllable2003 (July)
2003
WindowsServer 2003 (April 24)