[The Register] : Alternative Operating Systems

[The_Unbeliever]

Lest it be all but forgotten :

It's hard to believe, looking at the modern computing world, but there is still more to life than Windows or Unix… and today, most of the alternatives run on vanilla x86 hardware and are free.

Most of them need considerably lower resources than the market-leaders, too, so an old PC is ideal for trying them out. VMs are fine, but you can't get a real feel for an operating system until you've installed it on bare metal.

If you were around in the late 1990s, you might have heard of former Apple exec Jean-Louis Gassée's startup Be. Be Inc started out making its own hardware, then ported to Apple's Power Macintosh hardware, then to x86 and then, after a few final struggles, went under and was bought out.

You can still download the evaluation version of the final release, BeOS 5 Personal Edition, but it was built for tail-end-of-the-'90s hardware, so it's a bit dated today.

More, fascinating reading at this link : The Register : Go alternative!

 

[Electric]

BEOS was great back in the day.