A Neutral Look at Operating Systems

The purpose of this book is to provide a neutral view of as many Operating Systems as possible. This book strives to provide solid information on Operating Systems without the ever-prevalent "distribution/Operating System bias".

Wikipedia has a comparison of operating systems.

Comment: Mac OS X should be listed under UNIX/BSD, not as a root item!

Brief contents

1. Unix and derivatives
   1. Unix
   2. Solaris - Wikipedia:Solaris Operating Environment
   3. Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD)
      1. Mac OS
   4. Linux
   5. Hurd - Wikipedia:GNU Hurd
   6. Plan 9 - Wikipedia:Plan 9 (operating system)
   7. Inferno - Wikipedia:Inferno (operating system)
   8. QNX - Wikipedia:QNX
2. CP/M and derivatives
   1. Control Program for Microcomputers
   2. DOS
   3. Microsoft Windows
   4. OS/2
3. RISC OS - Wikipedia:RISC OS
4. EROS - Wikipedia:EROS
5. AmigaOS - Wikipedia:AmigaOS
   1. Aros - Wikipedia:Aros
   2. AmigaOS 4.x - Wikipedia:AmigaOS 4
   3. MorphOS - Wikipedia:MorphOS
6. BeOS - Wikipedia:BeOS

Extended contents

This lists the operating system variants contained in this book.

1. Unix derivatives
   1. Unix
   2. Solaris - Wikipedia:Solaris Operating Environment
   3. Berkeley Software Distribution
      1. DragonFly BSD
      2. FreeBSD
         1. PC-BSD
         2. DesktopBSD
      3. NetBSD
      4. OpenBSD
         1. MirOS BSD
      5. Quasijarus
   4. Linux
      1. Live CDs
         1. Knoppix
         2. Fedora
         3. Ubuntu
      2. Distributions for New Users
         1. Fedora Core
         2. Mandriva Linux
         3. Puppy Linux
         4. Ubuntu Linux
         5. SUSE
      3. Distributions for Power Users
         1. Debian GNU/Linux
         2. Slackware
      4. Distributions for Masochists (just kidding)
         1. Gentoo
         2. Linux From Scratch
         3. SourceMage
   5. Hurd - Wikipedia:GNU Hurd
   6. Plan 9 - Wikipedia:Plan 9 (operating system)
   7. Inferno - Wikipedia:Inferno (operating system)
   8. QNX - Wikipedia:QNX
2. CP/M derivatives
   1. Control Program for Microcomputers
   2. DOS
      1. FreeDOS
   3. Microsoft Windows
      1. /Microsoft Windows#Windows 1, Windows 2, Windows 3, Windows 3.1, Windows 3.11, Windows 3.12
      2. Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, Windows Me
      3. Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003
      4. ReactOS
   4. OS/2
3. Mac OS
   1. Mac OS to version 9
   2. Mac OS X
4. RISC OS - Wikipedia:RISC OS
5. EROS - Wikipedia:EROS
6. AmigaOS - Wikipedia:AmigaOS
   1. AmigaOS 1.0, AmigaOS 1.1, AmigaOS 1.2, AmigaOS 1.3
   2. AmigaOS 1.4
   3. AmigaOS 2.0, AmigaOS 2.05, AmigaOS 2.1
   4. AmigaOS 3.0, AmigaOS 3.1
   5. AmigaOS 3.5, AmigaOS 3.9
      1. Aros
      2. AmigaOS 4.x - Wikipedia:AmigaOS 4
      3. MorphOS - Wikipedia:MorphOS
7. BeOS - Wikipedia:BeOS

Authors

• Kernigh, expanded Berkeley Software Distribution chapter
• aGGreSSor, expanded AmigaOS chapter
• Other and anonymous contributors

Further reading

• "A Neutral Look at Operating Systems" generally looks at OSes designed for desktop and laptop personal computers, which are less than 2% of all the computers in the world. For OSes designed to run on the other 98% of all the computers in the world, see Embedded Systems/Common RTOS.