The Top 10 Worst Operating Systems of All Time

hey friends now recently on this channel i did a video that turned out to be quite popular actually going through my personal top 10 computer operating systems of all time and not only was i impressed that you know how many people enjoyed the video as i thought that one was going to be a little bit controversial but also how many people actually agreed with my choices you know there were a few people that disagreed obviously but in the main most people were like yeah i agree with you good list so if you want to check out that video if you haven't watched it yet i will of course link it up in this video's description but now that we've done the cream of the crop i thought it might be about time that we did the cream of the crap so in this video we're going to go through the top 10 worst personal computer operating systems ever but the last video was purely my personal choices i thought that we'd make this one a bit more of a democratic process so what i did is actually posted in a bunch of popular retro computing facebook groups and asked people to first of all name their personal worst computer operating system and then i went through and kind of compiled a top 10 list and then i put it up as a couple of polls in various groups and got people to vote on the order so this one i mean i did get hundreds of replies and hundreds of people voted on them so i think this one is actually quite a fair representation rather than being my personal opinions and i've got to say you know in this video there are actually quite a few on this list that i personally wouldn't have placed and not necessarily in that order either there are some that actually people hated that i do quite like and there are a couple on this list that you know make the top 10 because they were technological disasters you know they're actually a couple that didn't even make it to version 1.0 whether the timing was wrong or you know feature creep was a common thing that crept up and actually ruined a lot of these projects so in this video as voted for by the general retro computing population you could say we are going to go through the top 10 worst computer operating systems of all time enjoy and today's video is brought to you by our very good friends at fast hosts have actually let me write a question for their techie test and if you're based in the uk and you know the answer you could win the most incredible prize the ultimate tech bundle including your dream pc setup worth up to five thousand pounds check out the link in this video's description i'll explain more later in this video number 10 lindos now windows has been the industry standard operating system for most personal and business computers for almost 30 years now and it's still going nowhere there have been many attempts to topple microsoft's monopoly on the desktop over the years with some operating systems even trying to take that market by offering windows compatibility within their own os now we covered react os in my top 10 alternative operating systems video and that's still in development today but one other os that was a commercial enterprise wasn't so lucky back in 2001 a company called linspire released a linux based operating system that was compatible with windows applications by originally using the wine api that today you'll find bundled with many linux distributions they sold this as a commercial operating system that was marketed as being able to run your windows apps and it got a lot of attention with even walmart bundling it with their low end pcs to save on microsoft licensing costs now there's nothing too uncommon about linux distribution with wine built in to run windows apps but they didn't pick their battles wisely advertising a windows compatible os called lindos was bound to attract the attention of microsoft's lawyers and it wasn't long before they received a lawsuit claiming that the name was infringing microsoft's copyrights a court battle dragged on for two and a half years and it turned out the case wasn't quite as cut and dry as microsoft originally hoped they also tried to sue internationally taking lin spy to court in sweden france belgium luxembourg the netherlands canada as well as the us in the end microsoft decided to settle out of court and paid linspire 20 million dollars to take the lindos trademark off them so they could no longer use it this didn't end the operating system as they rebranded the os as linspire but without the name they quickly fell out of the limelight and despite continuing to release updates and new versions for several years they just couldn't compete with free linux distros that offer the same functionality and besides the loaded windows compatibility wasn't even that great to begin with number nine windows 8. now there are those people who think that windows has got a good and bad cycle with alternative versions being both good and bad ignoring the fact that windows 95 was actually a pretty good upgrade and there's no windows 2000 ever included on these charts but they definitely did release a stinker after the brilliant windows 7. windows 8 tried to be a jack of all trades an operating system that would scale and run on tablets phones laptops desktops consoles smart tvs but they ignored the fact that the vast majority of windows users are on pcs and notebooks and they put the touchscreen optimized tablet style interface of metro front and center and to force everyone to use this they even abolished one of the most functional and logical design elements of windows the start menu that had been present in the os since it was introduced in windows 95. the main problem with windows a is that it just had a split personality trying to mash the traditional desktop interface with elements of a tablet style ui meaning that things that didn't need to be full screen ended up taking over the entire display which is fine when using it on a phone or tablet not so much on a 28 inch monitor and even worse there was loads of duplication with programs and settings offering two versions of themselves one for the metro ui and one for desktop and they're often named the same thing meaning that when you clicked on something you never really knew what was going to appear trying to force desktop users to use a tablet interface on a monitor was predictably met with many complaints and overnight several third-party solutions were introduced to restore the start menu and disable the metro or as it was later known modern ui altogether eventually microsoft bowed to the pressure and modern ui was scaled back and the start menu was reintroduced in windows 10. number eight gnu heard the gnu project was started by richard stallman in 1983 with the goal of giving computer users freedom and complete control over their own computers one of the major goals was to build an operating system that would be totally free but would have everything useful that was normally contained within a unix operating system gnu itself is actually a recursive acronym which means gnus not unix development on the operating system started in 1984 but by 1991 it still lacked an essential part the kernel which was nicely filled by linus torball's new linux kernel which was combined with the system utilities and tools that were already developed by the gnu project and today is an operating system that is commonly known as just linux now stallman insists it should be called gnu plus linux which by writes it probably should be as it's a combination of both technologies and he's also had a bit of a grudge about that gnu herd is the micro kernel that's been developed by the gnu project designed to fit into the place where linux slotted in which would have made it the full gnu operating system unfortunately after 30 years it's still not finished or ready for prime time development on the kernel started in 1990 but with many developers losing interest and the project been put into stasis several times as linux just worked however development has slowly pressed on over the last three decades with the most recent release version 0.9 being released in 2016 but it's still plagued by lots of missing features and lots of instability this has of course led to some free software fans to joke that the system may be aiming to get ready for 2090 in time for its 100th birthday number seven ibm dos 4.0 now ms-dos made our best operating systems list but it's not been all smooth sailing for dos dos version 4 known as 3.4 originally in development was developed mostly by ibm with some minor involvement from microsoft and it made its debut in the summer of 1988 and while dos 4.0 did bring some welcome new technologies including a graphical shell support for hard disks of up to two gigabytes in size and the use of extended memory for disk buffers and a proper installer it was also extremely buggy and it suffered compatibility issues with lots of applications due to ibm changing some of the core dos internals and it was very memory hungry compared to previous releases microsoft took back control of development and released a bug fixed version 4.01 shortly after but by then it was too late it had a really bad reputation and many users abandoned it and went back to the previous version 3.3 and dos 4.0 has often been cited as a reason that many computer fans never trust a point zero release for prime time use number six windows 1.0 now we're not even halfway through and already our second mention of windows on this list now the first public release of windows was version 1.01 in november of 1985. after working with apple to develop applications for the new macintosh computer microsoft then revealed that they've been working on their own gui for ibm pc compatible machines much to steve jobs fury microsoft aimed to provide a gui-like interface that sat on top of dos and allowed pc users to run ms-dos applications and graphical programs designed for use with windows now windows 1.0 was certainly colorful but when it was released it was not received well at all critics cited performance issues on common pc configurations of the day and the fact that it didn't teach users well enough how to use the new mouse interface relying heavily on the mouse for input and obviously at the time most users were used to just inputting via a keyboard it was a big learning curve that it didn't successfully bridge and to add to that there was a big lack of software available to take advantage of windows of course it did go on to change the world but the beginnings of windows were not too impressive to say the least all right so we're halfway through the list of the top 10 worst personal computer operating systems ever any surprises so far anything you disagree with i'd love to hear a comment off you and we're nearly into the top five the worst os is ever and of course there is going to be at least one more appearance from microsoft in the top five apple will make an appearance in there as well even sun micro systems so we're going to continue counting down into the top five worst personal computer operating systems next and before we do that it's time for you to win this incredible prize the ultimate tech bundle including your dream pc setup worth up to 5 000 pounds and it's all thanks to today's sponsor our amazing friends of fast hosts now they are a uk based web hosting company who offer a wide range of web hosting products and other services aiming to support uk businesses and entrepreneurs all levels providing effective and affordable hosting solutions to suit any need for example you can customize your own resources and scale your cloud servers on demand by configuring your virtual machines with full route access combine your own choice of scalable cpu ram and ssd storage to make a cloud server that really suits your personal need and of course data loss can strike anybody at any time for any reason instead don't leave it up to look protect your data with fast host cloud backup and be ready for if the worst happens it makes worrying about disaster recovery a thing of the past and you can test it out by getting five gigabytes of cloud backup absolutely free so to win your dream tech bundle and pc setup worth up to five thousand pounds all you need to do is answer my techie test question which leading computer graphics company did nintendo partner with when making the n64 if you know the answer and you want to win that tech bundle head to the link in this video's description thanks to our good friends at fast hosts good luck right then let's get back into the top five worst operating systems of all time and at number five mac os 8 copeland now this is not to be confused with the release product that had the name mac os 8. codename copeland was intended to be the powerpc native next generation to apple's aging system 7 operating system and brought with it many new features that were much needed including preemptive multitasking and memory protection while aiming to retain compatibility with current mac applications and it was designed to see the mac platform into the 21st century development on copeland started in 1994 and early work was demoed to developers at wwdc in may of 95 with a release date set for early 1996. the apple press kept showing keen users mock-ups and previews to keep them interested over the next couple of years but copeland became a victim of feature creep with more and more developers apple being taken off existing projects to work on the new os and all of them bringing their own ideas and features that they wanted to include they were even working on making it compatible with windows at one stage so users could run windows nt programs from copeland now of course with all of this been added into it it completely missed its 1996 release date apple did release a demo to developers in summer of 1996 but it was far from finished state and it crashed constantly often corrupting the hard disk when it did and some developers actually spoke out that they were staggered that apple would show them copeland in such a poor unfinished state unsurprisingly copeland was eventually cancelled in late 1996 after over two years of full-time development by an army of apple engineers it was unworkable and it just added to apple's bad image and financial problems that they were having at the time in the end they needed to move ahead so they decided the best option would be to buy a readily working operating system instead and they acquired steve jobs next incorporated and used their next step os as the basis for mac os 10. number four java os today the idea of an operating system that runs applications and code on various devices is starting to take off with systems like chrome os and friend a new operating system i'm involved with and i cover in more detail in my alternative os's video that allows you to take your virtual computer with you across various devices but back in 1996 the technology just wasn't ready for this sun's java os was an embedded system based on a java virtual machine that ran java applications across a network the java platform at the time still known as hotjava had only been around for a year at this stage and java os promised that it could run java based applications on anything from network computers to pages atms and set-top boxes essentially taking pc hardware back to a thin client or a terminal design and some released their own java station hardware that ran java os and if you want to check out more about that have a look at cameron grey's brilliant video on this obscure bit of sun history but adoption of java os was very very slow as was the performance of the operating system and the applications themselves java applets ran over the network and you've got to remember that server speeds back in the mid 90s weren't anywhere near the 100 gig connections that we can get with modern cat 7 cabling with most systems only having 10 meg ethernet at the time and then factoring in multi-user environments java os and the applications were to put it mildly dog slow by 1999 it was clear that the system wouldn't be a success and it was discontinued shortly after number three microsoft bob now before i get the inevitable comments i am totally aware that microsoft bob wasn't actually an operating system technically it did just run on top of but actually really take over the functionality of windows 3.1 or windows 95 but in much the same way the earlier versions of windows did with ms-dos so i figure if we can class windows 1.0 as a full operating system bob can make this list as well and besides it received a ton of votes in my polls we had to mention it in here now bob was designed to be a way to make computers feel less scary to normal folk and it ended up being a clunky slow system that often patronized its users rather than helping them released in 1995 microsoft bob turned your computer's files and folder structure into the kind of system you'd use if you lived on sesame street the idea was that it will provide a more friendly user interface to new users giving them familiar things to represent applications on their computer and you were guided through this experience by a variety of virtual assistants including a dog called rover who was kind of like a microsoft office clippy on steroids truly horrible number two windows me now we're nearing the top of the crappy now and at number two it is windows me and yes it is pronounced windows me not me windows me is the latest version of windows for the home user me or millennium edition to give it its proper name or mistake edition as it's commonly known was the final release in the windows 9x line released in late 2000 and discontinued 11 months later when windows xp was launched its extremely short lifespan was one of the things that really hurt windows me now windows 2000 was already on the market at this stage but that was a continuation of the windows nt line aimed at business and enterprise use not at the home user and as windows xp wasn't yet ready for release microsoft tried to bridge that gap by bringing out one final 9x release my only experience of me was we ran a pc at work that just displayed a clock on a wall it was mounted on a monitor that's all it did and this was back in around 2007. nobody ever touched that machine and it was blue screen of death around twice a week but it wasn't all bad windows me did add some nice features to windows 98 such as system restore which admittedly wasn't very stable the user interface of me was also one of my favorite windows looks ever bringing the slick gradient look of windows 2000 to the consumer market and it has got reputation for being unstable buggy and worst of all microsoft removed real mode dos which broke compatibility with a lot of older software and games now just because i seem to like pain i've actually been running windows me on this e-machine's pc dated from around 2001 for the last couple of weeks and admittedly i've not really had many instability issues i've not had a blue screen of death and i do love the user interface i've got to say the boot speed is much improved over windows 98 i think the main thing i can say about windows me is that it's just so forgettable it was the shortest windows release on the market and it really felt rushed and just pointless the 9x line went out with a whimper and there's no real reason that you'd ever choose it over windows 98 se it didn't offer anything compelling and it really felt like it was just a new operating system released for the sake of putting something out and number one windows vista now when i put the question of the worst os of all time out on facebook there was no surprise at all when i saw the number one choice windows vista was overwhelmingly voted into the top position and it's not hard to see why now you'll have to excuse the low screen resolution i couldn't even get virtualbox's graphics drivers to play nicely with vista even ignoring the six-year development cycle of vista where project longhorn was completely rebooted halfway through in much the same way that feature creep spoiled mac os copeland vista finally arrived onto the market in early 2007 and it caused huge disruption in the pc industry and not in a good way vista changed so much from windows xp that users found drivers failing or crashing programs becoming unstable or just not running at all and it suffered from needing much higher system requirements than its predecessor now i remember installing vista on my pentium 4 machine at launch and i soon realized i would need more than the 512 megabytes that i had installed and i had to upgrade to 2 gigabytes to get it to run smoothly but that was a big part of the problem with vista it needed a lot more resources than a lot of computer users were running and many people were upgrading to vista on machines that could just about run xp and having a very poor experience and this was made even worse by hardware manufacturers releasing machines that were labeled as vista capable when they weren't really and then that led to legal action from consumers who claimed that they were duped into buying machines that weren't powerful enough to run the new operating system vista's reputation was quickly tarnished and it became a running joke in the industry what kind of operating system does it use vista we're going to die hardware oems even started bundling their vista pcs and laptops with windows xp cds in the box due to a drop in sales but vista actually brought some big advancements to the nt infrastructure the aero interface is still probably my favorite windows look ever its transparency effects were beautiful if you had hardware capable of running them it had ready boost and ready drive technology which could use usb drives as extra ram although in practice it wasn't all that quick on usb 2.0 it introduced windows defender giving the system some security out of the box and of course it had uac which was generally hated probably because it prompted the user just a little too often but it did mean that windows finally had admin only privileges for selected programs in the same way that os 10 and linux already did by the time service pack 2 came along and upgraded my hardware i actually did find vista okay in everyday use but it was too late by then microsoft even ran a campaign showing a mythical new operating system called windows mojave to users who'd heard how bad vista was and it turns out they actually loved it and was surprised when they revealed that it was windows vista but the damage was already done in reality xp was on the market for far too long and people hadn't upgraded their systems ready for vista microsoft underplayed the system requirements and they changed too much too quickly leading to some massive compatibility issues particularly with system drivers windows 7 actually wasn't that much different to vista sp2 but that was universally loved but vista is still to this day regarded by many and of course was voted to the top of this list as the worst operating system of all time so there you go was it really any surprise that windows vista made it to number one i did that at the start of the video you know that i didn't necessarily agree with not only some of the placings on the list but also the order as well i mean you know for me vista i did talk about my reasons a moment ago but when it got to sp2 i actually quite enjoyed using the operating system maybe it wouldn't have made number one in my list so anyway i'd love to know your opinions as i said this entire list was voted on democratically by the retro computing forums and communities so uh you know they made the list hundreds of people voted on it so i'd love to know your thoughts anything that you place differently maybe something that we completely missed out please do leave a comment thank you for watching this video and if you did enjoy this video you know i do a weekly retro gaming and technology podcast every friday called the retro hour and you can download it from wherever you normally get your podcast from we do interviews every week we do a roundtable discussion of the biggest retro gaming and tech stories of the last seven days released every single friday and you can get it from our website the retrohour.com or your favorite podcast client and while here on youtube why not check out this video i think you might find interesting thank you for watching i will see you next time

Channel: Dan Wood

Views: 550,942

Keywords: wost operating system ever, worst operating system all time, worst operating systems, windows vista worst, worst oscar speech, worst windows version, worst windows versions, worst mac version, worst linux, retro computing, 90s, 80s, vintage computing, vintage computer festival, microsoft, windows 1.0, lindows, gnu hurd, linux, richard stallman, apple 90s, system 7

Id: CKagLG2lVZg

Length: 25min 40sec (1540 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 22 2020