Bad Classic Operating Systems (was: Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers)

From: Derek Peschel <dpeschel_at_eskimo.com>
Date: Sun Apr 21 10:26:09 2002

On Sun, Apr 21, 2002 at 11:15:54AM -0400, R. D. Davis wrote:
> Quothe Richard Erlacher, spreader of pro-Microsoft propaganda, from his
> writings of Sat, Apr 20, 2002 at 08:07:40PM -0600:
>
> > ... and if you're dumb enough to believe that, you'll get what you deserve.
>
> Au contraire. Micro$oft windoze users get what they deserve.
>
> To bring this back on-topic: in the years prior to the existence of
> Micro$oft and it's viruses pretending to be operating systems, can
> anyone think of any vintage operating system(s) that was (were) known
> for being poorly designed, annoying to use, and dangerous to data,
> which was (were) regarded with the same disdain as Micro$oft windows,
> yet still had loyal lusers who apparently didn't know any better than
> not to use it (them)?

Many would put OS/360 in that category.

Some CDC 6600 OSs (I think NOS, maybe others) have permanent and
temporary files. If your batch job ends and you haven't made your
temporary files permanent, they will be gone. This unintuitive feature
persisted after CDC added an interactive terminal interface to the
underlying batch functionality. You could call that dangerous to data
(and I wouldn't disagree with you).

I hope I haven't messed up those facts... someone will probably correct
me if I have. Doug Q.?

And you can bet that there have been OSs (probably for small computers)
with much less functionality than MS-DOS. I'm thinking of the kind that
have file systems so rudimentary they're hardly worthy of the name (you
are limited to a very small number of files, or files on disk must be
contiguous, or there are no named files at all, just commands to dump
memory to areas of disk and read it back again). Apple's DOS 1 and 2
had no files, or so I hear. FORTH often still doesn't, though it was
designed to be small. Doubtless there were others that were commercially
sold.

-- Derek
Received on Sun Apr 21 2002 - 10:26:09 BST