Which is the worst OS disaster?

[maflynn]

OS/2

On one hand, it was ahead of its time, the design outstripped the hardware's ability to drive the OS. On another hand, contracting Microsoft and paying them by the number of lines of code produced, made OS/2 overly bloated and slow.

They (IBM) had an opportunity to release it before windows 3 but opted for a complete revamp of the desktop UI that delayed it until after windows 3 hit the streets and it was slower buggier and bloated.

 

[deluxeshredder]

I don't know why the answer to "no more skeumorphism" is "flat".

Because the "flat" design is often seen as an easy way of getting a "fresh" look. Probably the only OS that has benefited from flattening is Android, as the pre-ICS UI theme was awful.

 

[roadbloc]

Agreed. I don't know why the answer to "No more skeumorphism" is "flat"

Real things are 3D.

 

[Mousse]

OS/2

On one hand, it was ahead of its time, the design outstripped the hardware's ability to drive the OS.

Y'all can thank internal politicking for that. The Main Frame guys wanted PCs to be little more than dumb terminals reliant on big iron for the heavy lifting. The PS/2 (the computer OS/2 was designed for) was hobbled with 286, instead of superior in every way 386. Clone makers flocked to the 386, making faster and cheaper machine than IBM's.

That and because of horrible marketing: "A better DOS than DOS, a better Windows than Windows." So where's the incentive for software designers to write OS/2 programs? They can write Windows 3 programs and it would run on OS/2 as well.

OS/2 never had a shot.

 

[ratsg]

OS/2 was, and IMHO is still light years ahead of anything out of m$, even though the 1.0 to 1.2 stuff originated there.

OS/2 continues to live on in the commercial world as eComStation.

http://www.ecomstation.com/

Lots of neat new features, to include the ability to now boot from JFS2 file systems.

There is also an open source (rewrite) version of OS/2 available. There apparently was too much stuff from too many different vendors for IBM to ever be able to open source the commercial code.

 

[notjustjay]

Interesting that Desktop Linux makes the list (no votes yet, though). I wouldn't call it a disaster, but it's certainly not ready for prime time. I have a friend who insists on penny-pinching and thus runs only Linux at home with free software like OpenOffice. It causes nothing but grief for his family to have this setup which is "almost" easy to use and "almost" just like everyone else's. And he's spent many weekends debugging drivers and reading forums and rebuilding kernels instead of just getting stuff done.

Linux is great for many things. Plopping it in front of a computer novice, and expecting them to get day-to-day work done, is not one of them.

 

[MyMac1976]

Interesting that Desktop Linux makes the list (no votes yet, though). I wouldn't call it a disaster, but it's certainly not ready for prime time. I have a friend who insists on penny-pinching and thus runs only Linux at home with free software like OpenOffice. It causes nothing but grief for his family to have this setup which is "almost" easy to use and "almost" just like everyone else's. And he's spent many weekends debugging drivers and reading forums and rebuilding kernels instead of just getting stuff done.

Linux is great for many things. Plopping it in front of a computer novice, and expecting them to get day-to-day work done, is not one of them.

Plopping it set up in font of a novice user is just fine. Lat year my father-in-law somehow deleted his DE dunno how he did it but he managed to...

Linux is what it is it either appeals to you or it doesn't I have a Mac and a Linux box when I don't know what I'm going to be facing when I leave the house my Linux box goes with..

 

[deluxeshredder]

Plopping it set up in font of a novice user is just fine. Lat year my father-in-law somehow deleted his DE dunno how he did it but he managed to...

Linux is what it is it either appeals to you or it doesn't I have a Mac and a Linux box when I don't know what I'm going to be facing when I leave the house my Linux box goes with..

My experiences with various takes on desktop Linux have been terrible. All I have seen is a "desktop" OS that can't display a boot splash properly, can't even boot on many mainstream configurations without tweaks, can't turn on TRIM on SSDs, doesn't work with many devices (even with essential stuff such as Wi-Fi adapters and printers), can't be properly localised, generally has terrible hotchpotch UIs (Unity is a disgusting OS X lookalike, GNOME 3 makes Windows 8's dual UI implementation look masterful), doesn't have good APIs (that's why almost no one can be bothered to write decent drivers for Linux), often can't install updates without breaking itself and generally has Windows 9x-like stability.

I'm tired of hearing promises about the bright future of desktop Linux. I had hope for that future when playing around with it in 2006-2007 and being impressed with Beryl/Compiz effects. But in 2013, I don't see desktop Linux flourishing, I see it as a feed-fan toy with little substance and very little decent development over the years. So I think it fully deserves an "OS disaster" tag.

(note that the above applies to the desktop Linux ecosystem, not to the server Linux ecosystem, Android or the Linux kernel itself)

 

[MyMac1976]

My experiences with various takes on desktop Linux have been terrible. All I have seen is a "desktop" OS that can't display a boot splash properly, can't even boot on many mainstream configurations without tweaks, can't turn on TRIM on SSDs, doesn't work with many devices (even with essential stuff such as Wi-Fi adapters and printers), can't be properly localised, generally has terrible hotchpotch UIs (Unity is a disgusting OS X lookalike, GNOME 3 makes Windows 8's dual UI implementation look masterful), doesn't have good APIs (that's why almost no one can be bothered to write decent drivers for Linux), often can't install updates without breaking itself and generally has Windows 9x-like stability.

I'm tired of hearing promises about the bright future of desktop Linux. I had hope for that future when playing around with it in 2006-2007 and being impressed with Beryl/Compiz effects. But in 2013, I don't see desktop Linux flourishing, I see it as a feed-fan toy with little substance and very little decent development over the years. So I think it fully deserves an "OS disaster" tag.

(note that the above applies to the desktop Linux ecosystem, not to the server Linux ecosystem, Android or the Linux kernel itself)

LOL I have none of these issues and have not since about 2008. I also did not talk about a bright future for the Linux desktop. I'll keep my disaster and you can keep your OS X deal??