The Epic crew talk about their favourite and not so favourite operating systems new and old.
Hosts
- Marc Cabot (@MarcCabot)
- Richard Gray(@EpicRich1)
- Andy McMullen (@AndyLastName)
- Mark, the Encaffeinated One (@encaf1)
- Nuchtchas (@Nuchtchas, nimlas.org)
- The Clockwork Doctor (@The_Clock_Doc)
Show Notes
- Windows 95
www.microsoft.com - Windows Millenium
www.microsoft.com - The Apple TV
http://store.apple.com/ca/ipod/ipod-accessories/apple-tv
- OSX – Mountain Lion
http://www.apple.com/ca/osx/
- Open ELEC box (xbmc media center)
http://openelec.tv/
- Windows XP
www.microsoft.com - Linux/BSD
http://www.linux.com/
http://www.freebsd.org/
- The history of GNU
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-history.html
- The history of windows
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-CA/windows/history#T1=era0
- The Commodore Computers
http://www.commodore.ca/history/company/chronology_portcommodore.htm
- GeOS on Commodore computers
http://commodore.ca/history/company/turks_geos.htm - Future Crew and the demo scene
http://future-crew.net/
- SteamOS
http://store.steampowered.com/steamos/ - Quantum Link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjgH27p-FAM
- ChromeOS
http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os
- The Next machines and true tones
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT
- Microsoft Bob
Time Magazine: 50 Worst Inventions (http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1991915_1991909_1991855,00.html)
Bill Gates Interviews about MS Bob (http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1991915_1991909_1991855,00.html) - The Leap Pad
http://www.leapfrog.com/en/index.html
- The kaypro
http://oldcomputers.net/kayproii.html
- The SX64
http://oldcomputers.net/sx64.html
- Amstrad Portablel Machine
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=195 - Classic Macs
http://apple-history.com/classic
- The Amiga video toaster
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1OVWfmynPw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seznQmDp2pU
Epic Words
“It is the fate of the operating system to become free.”
– Neil Stevenson
WordPress Links
- Linux Operating Systems That Rule
http://pingnroute.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/linux-operating-systems-that-rule/ - My Brief Experience with Windows 7
http://nolongertheonlyone.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/my-brief-experience-with-windows-7/ - My Second Experience with Windows 7
http://nolongertheonlyone.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/my-second-experience-with-windows-7/ - Death of an Operating System
http://nolongertheonlyone.wordpress.com/2008/12/05/death-of-an-operating-system/
Corrections
- Could not substantiate that the NeXT had true tone technology.
- Could not substantiate that there is a code that causes the commodore PET to burn out.
If you noticed any issues with this episode and would like us to post a correction, email us here: epicchsr [at] gmail [dot] com or tweet us at: @epicchsr
Credits
- Recorded at CHSR 97.9 FM in Fredericton, New Brunswick
- Post Editing: Marc Cabot
- Hosts: Marc Cabot, Richard Gray, Andy McMullen, Nuchtchas, The Clockwork Doctor, Mark the Encaffeinated One
- Opening Sketch by: Marc Cabot
- Opening/Closing Music: ”Cheezee Lab” by Kevin MacLeod via Incompetech.com
Epic by Geekloo.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Great topic, it brought back lots of memories.
Vista had real problems. Microsoft made them much worse by grossly understating how much hardware was needed to run it. I put it on four “Vista-capable” machines when it was released and had to revert to XP on two of them, the performance was so bad. There was actually a class action lawsuit about it. It also proved totally incapable of running on the netbooks that were popular at the time, even though Microsoft refused to allow XP on netbooks with more than 1GB of RAM.
One of my favorite machines was the Atari ST. I did a lot of music, and it had built in MIDI, but I also liked the operating system a lot. It was similar to the Mac or the Amiga, but it was in ROM so it booted very quickly, and it could read DOS formatted floppies.
My other favorite old computers, but not so much for OS reasons, were the Toshiba Libretto, a small computer running Windows 95 that my wife carried everywhere and played Civilization on, and a very small Sony UMPC that ran XP (but with some nifty stuff, built in cellular and a fingerprint scanner) and that I hacked to dual boot to OS X Tiger.
Windows now has the same sort of issues that iTunes has for Apple. It started out doing a few simple things and has had every feature in the world grafted onto it. They need to blow it up and start over with a small, secure, fast core, as Apple did with OS X years ago. Windows 8 on a tablet gobbles up about half of a 64GB disk, which is too big to be useful.
In general I prefer the modern OSs, though. I think that iOS being easy enough for a three year old or a technophobe grandparent to be comfortable with is really a major accomplishment.