10 Operating Systems You Might Not Know About

An operating system is a program designed to run other programs on a computer. A computer’s operating system is its most important program. It is considered the backbone of a computer, managing both software and hardware resources. Operating systems are responsible for everything from the control and allocation of memory to recognizing input from external devices and transmitting output to computer displays. So today, I am going to be mentioning some Operating Systems that have been used in the past or are used in today’s time.

I am going to be listing some operating systems that you may, or may not have heard of yet :

10.Darwin

Darwin is an open source POSIX-compliant computer operating system released by Apple Inc. in 2000. It builds on BSD and includes the kernel, and core system utilities. Darwin in itself is a complete operating system. Apple build on Darwin to create OSX, iOS, and AppleTV,which is something that not many people are aware of. It was used to create the 32-bit ARM processor used in the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad as well.

9. FreeBSD

FreeBSD is an advanced operating system for modern server, desktop, and embedded computer platforms. Its development started in 1993 and in  FreeBSD 2.0 was released in late 1994.FreeBSD’s code base has undergone over thirty years of continuous development, improvement, and optimization. It is also used by some of the world’s busiest web sites and most pervasive embedded networking and storage devices.Out of all BSDs,FreeBSD is the most used. It’s most recent release was in January 12, 2012.

8. ReactOS

ReactOS is a free, modern operating system based on the design of Windows XP/2003. It is not a Linux based system, and shares none of the unix architecture. ReactOS has been designed for high security; it doesn’t share some of the common security flaws with other operating systems. ReactOS has been noted for its information on undocumented Windows APIs and more generally as an open-source drop-in replacement for Windows. It was first released on July 20, 1998 and its most recent release was on February 7, 2012.

7. Solaris

Solaris was orignally developed by Sun Microsystems but after Oracle Corportaion’s acquistion of Sun Microsystems in January 2010 it has been as Oracle Solaris. Solaris is known for its scalability, especially on SPARC systems, and for originating many innovative features such as DTrace, ZFS and Time Slider. It was first released in June 1992 and its most recent release was on November 9,2011.

6. OpenBSD

OpenBSDis a free open source operating system based upon the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) for UNIX. OpenBSD evolved from NetBSD and also runs on a variety of hardware. It also pays alot of attention towards the security of the content provided by the users and constantly works around to fix any of the problems that may affect the users. Users may also report their problems with it to them. It was first released on 1 October,1996 and it’s most recent release was on 1 November,2011.

5. AmigaOS

AmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. Amiga Inc. was founded in 1982. The Amiga was developed first as game console.  It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000. Currently,its intellectual properties belong to Amiga Inc. Its most recent release was on 22 December,2011.

4. NEXTSTEP

NeXTSTEP was the object-oriented, multitasking operating system developed by NeXT Computer to run on its range of proprietary workstation computers, such as the NeXTcube. This was at the time when Steve Jobs left Apple in 1986, he then started NeXT. He wanted a computer that would run on Research Labs ,Universities,Colleges,etc. He envisioned it to be the Market leader in Science. It was based on the Mach kernel and 4.3BSD Unix. It was first released in September 18, 1989 and the last update it recieved was in 1995.

3. AtheOS

AtheOS was a free and open source operating system for x86-based computers. AtheOS currently runs on Intel, AMD and other compatible processors and support the Intel Multi Processor architecture. AtheOS was created by a  Norwegian programmer, Kurt Skauen and it was announced to the world in March 2000.

2. SkyOS

SkyOS was a prototype commercial, proprietary, graphical desktop operating system written for the x86 computer architecture. It was made by Robert Szeleney over a span of 10 years.  The SkyOS, on the surface, resembles Microsoft Windows but has features–such as protected memory, symmetric multiprocessing, multitasking, and multithreading, which Windows lacks. It’s last release was on August 3, 2008.

1. Slax

Slax is a LiveCD Linux distribution based on Slackware and is currently being developed by Tomáš Matějíček.its ease of customization is one of its biggest benefits.Slax modules are compressed read-only SquashFS file system images that are compressed with a LZMA compressor. Slax’s slogan says, “your pocket operating system”. The most recent release of Slax was on 4 August 2009.