12 Alternative Operating Systems You Can Use In 2020

if you use a desktop PC or laptop in 2020 the chances are you're either using Windows 10 Mac OS or maybe one of the many Linux distros that are out there but despite what many people believe there are actually more choices out there than just the main three operating systems and in this video we'll be taking a look at 12 amazingly alternative operating systems that you can use today now the first OS on our list is actually one of the most interesting operating systems that we'll be talking about haiku came out of a revolutionary computer and OS that was born in the early 90s originally designed for a platform called the B Box B OS was an operating system that throughout the years of legacy code and backwards compatibility as Mac OS and Windows of the day and focused on delivering fast multimedia features despite being a very robust and efficient platform and even at one point looking like it could be the next operating system for the Mac before Apple did a deal with Steve Jobs next computers company vos failed to generate a significant market share and copyrights were sold to Palm in 2001 several projects used parts of the vos code after but haiku is a fully open source free implementation of BOS there aims to bring the operating system its concepts and ideas into the 21st century and it retains backwards compatibility with POS programs development has been somewhat slow with work starting in 2001 and the current version beta 1 having been released in September 2018 but as it stands it's a fun and usable operating system and it's completely free one of the main criticisms of Windows over the years has been that it's a closed source operating system and controlled by just Microsoft react OS aims to change that work started just after the release of Windows 95 and the aim is to eventually have a drop-in replacement open-source operating system that can fully replace Windows their mission statement on their website says the main goal of the real os project is to provide an operating system which is binary compatible with Windows such that people accustomed to the familiar user interface of Windows would find using react OS straightforward the ultimate goal of reactor LS is to allow you to remove Windows and install react OS without the end-user noticing the change now after 21 years of development it is still considered alpha software that is currently featuring complete but today you will find that a lot of Windows software will work just fine within react OS friend realizes a vision that many industry leaders had including Steve Jobs he was talking about this back in the 90s a time when hardware would no longer be important and users wouldn't have to worry about things such as updating their own systems and it could all be taken care of on a server friend is an open source cloud based operating system that can be accessed on any device that has a modern web browser and brings them into a new concept called sky computing applications documents file systems and the GUI all run within a tab in your browser via the friend workspace an html5 and JavaScript based user interface meaning it can be run on any device from a smart phone to a high-end workstation interestingly friend also borrows some desktop and file system concepts from a meager OS and the try fortable operating system that was born at cambridge university and ran on the cambridge distributed computing system now a little disclaimer i have been involved in the friend project for a few years now but if you'd like to try it out for yourself you can sign up for a free online account or download the source code and run your own server by heading to their website friend OS comm standing for atari running on any machine Aaron M is actually a virtual machine similar to something like VirtualBox of VMware that's designed to run operating systems designed for the Atari ST and Falcon line of retro computers this does include the native Atari TOS and also newer third party operating systems like free mint magic and the Motorola 60 kay distros of linux they do state that it's not meant to be an emulator for the atari machines even though it does have a pretty high compatibility rate with classic applications and even contains the Falcom custom chips in software the latest release came out in 2017 and can be downloaded as a free live CD image from github which boots on a small Linux core which means it should work with pretty much any PC anyone who went to school in Britain in the early to mid 90s will probably be familiar with this next operating system RISC OS started life on acorns range of Archimedes computers which were the standard computer platform in the British education sector until the mid to late 90s first released in 1987 it was designed to be the native operating system of the then-new arm chipset and yes that is the same arm platform that's in your smartphone today acorn were often referred to as the British Apple and they were a very innovative company giving lots of British kids their first taste of computers with the akon BBC micro RISC OS shipped with all a con ARM based machines from 1987 to 1998 when akon exited the personal computer market and renamed themselves to element14 RISC OS was forked into different projects and companies the open-source version maintained by the RISC OS open team is available for several modern on platforms but it also released a few years ago on the popular Raspberry Pi platform that really reinvigorated mainstream interest in RISC OS and if you've got a Raspberry Pi and you'd like to try it out it is part of the PI noobs installer or you can get an image from their official website morpho s is the first of the updated amiga influenced operating systems on this list originally intended to be a new version of the Amiga OS written for the then new PowerPC architecture Morpho s updates many of the amigas best features for the 21st century and also retains compatibility with many legacy applications the OS originally ran on classic amiga computers with PowerPC accelerator cards but today it can also run on standalone PowerPC platforms such as older PowerPC Macs so if you've got a spare Mac Mini g4 or a Power Mac g5 kicking around it can really breathe new life into those systems now it should be noted that Morpho s is a paid-for operating system but you can download a live CD and run a 30-minute time demo to try it out future development of Morpho s includes it being ported to modern x64 hardware once upon a time in the late 1980s Windows had a competitor which many believed could go on to become the new default OS for PCs the team who gave us the original hardware and software for the PC platform Microsoft and IBM teamed up to release operating system 2 or os/2 as it was abbreviated very soon seeing it as a competitor to their Windows 3.1 platform Microsoft dropped out leaving os/2 in the hands of IBM it added some very nice features for the time and by the time os/2 warp was released in 1995 it offered excellent compatibility with dos and windows 3.1 in fact it was often referred to as a better dose than DOS and a better Windows than Windows after an estimated nine hundred and ninety million dollars being spent per year on development os/2 just couldn't topple the Microsoft dominance and at its peak it never reached higher than a five percent market share of PC operating systems despite finding uses in embedded applications such as cash machines os/2 was phased out by IBM in the mid-2000s step forward to 2017 and finally a new os/2 derived operating system arrived at called ARCA OS this is a close source commercial operating system that brings os/2 into the modern age it can run legacy 16 and 32-bit OS two applications 16-bit windows apps dos programs and lots more plus bringing modern benefits such as big hard disk support multi-core support and huge amounts of RAM but this is really designed for companies who are tied to legacy os/2 applications and want a more modern way of continuing to use those systems without starting over but from what I've read on forums it does have fans in long time os/2 users as well a Ross the eros of research operating system or originally the amiga research operating system or amiga replacement operating system is a free open source update of the Amiga OS designed for multiple platforms starting life back in 1995 the goal was to create a free more modern replacement for the Commodore Amiga workbench 3.1 and today a Ross can be installed on many platforms including standard PCs Macs there are arm versions for systems like the Raspberry Pi and even a port to the classic 68k amiga the icarus desktop build of a Ross has lots of useful pre bundled programs and settings all in place and you can actually run it from a live image Solaris is a UNIX based operating system that dates back to 1992 originally developed by the mighty Sun Microsystems to replace their earliest Sun OS Sun were acquired by Oracle in 2010 and the operating system continues to this day now despite a few years as an open source project on the Sun when they fall Solaris into the opensolaris project Oracle discontinued this essentially turning Solaris back into a closed source commercial product the open source code went on to be developed into a Solaris based OS called illumos the main Solaris OS is now up to version 11 point 4 and supports the SPARC architecture as well as standard x86 and 64 machines before there was Linux there was MINIX a unix-like operating system designed for use on microcomputers originally started in 1987 it has been ported to pretty much any platform you can think of including standard pcs the Atari ST classic Mac's spark stations amiga arm and lots MINIX has been free and opensource since the year 2000 and the current version stands at 3.0 our third and final Amiga in spite operating system on the list is Amiga OS 4.1 now this is a proprietary commercial operating system designed for custom PowerPC machines and based on the classic Amiga iOS 3.1 from Commodore development started on a meager OS for in the early 2000s as a way to bring the Amiga operating system to the more powerful PowerPC platform with the latest version being released in 2016 it retains an updated version of the Amiga workbench as its user interface and brings with it many modern features such as Network updating support for more modern graphic cards and higher RAM and disk ape abilities than the old commodore version versions of Amiga OS 4 are available for custom Amiga one hardware and a version for classic Amiga machines with PowerPC accelerators and this version can also be run under the win UAE emulation platform the last and possibly most bizarre operating system on the list is Temple OS a free public domain 64-bit operating system this was designed by Terry Davis now Terry was a programmer who worked on vac systems after graduating from Arizona State University and he got his start by learning 6510 assembly on the commodore 64 terry grew up as a catholic and in the mid-1990s he began experiencing some manic episodes eventually leading to a diagnosis of schizophrenia templo s is a very lightweight biblical fiend operating system and Terry claimed the design of it was instructed to him by God himself the user interface is very reminiscent of 80 systems with a 640 by 480 16 color display Terry claimed that the limited resolution was to make it easier for children to draw illustrations for God Terry passed away after being hit by a train in 2018 but the OS in his finished state can still be downloaded today it is a very bizarre inside into the workings of his mind but looking at it it is also an impressive feat that this entire project was created by one person if you'd like to download and try any of these operating systems and we'll put more information in the video description and if you've enjoyed this video you might want to check out my weekly retro gaming and Technology podcast available every Friday from Spotify Apple podcast goobot where every norm you get your podcasts from or you can download it directly from our website at the retro our comm and while you're on youtube why not check out a few more of my videos and maybe hit that subscribe button I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Dan Wood

Views: 849,158

Rating: 4.7966866 out of 5

Keywords: alternative operating systems, alternative to windows, obscure operating systems, operating systems 2020, weird operating systems, retro, retro gaming, retro computing, 80s computing, 90s computing, operating system, linux, os, lgr, dan wood, lunduke, templeos, amigaos, reactos, haiku, beos, bebox, minix, unix, solaris, friend, friendup, atari tos, morphos, aros amiga, amiga

Id: ATwT4DwoXnM

Length: 13min 53sec (833 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 09 2020