~OTHER OPERATING SYSTEMS Windows and Linux are not the only operating systems. Some users still run DOS or one of its many variants. Amiga is still being talked about, and plenty of other alternatives are available too. So get familiar with what's out there. Maybe you'll find something more amenable to your purposes than what you're using now.
10 AMAZING ALTERNATIVE OPERATING SYSTEMS .......... These alternative operating systems are usually developed either by enthusiasts or small companies (or both), and there are more of them than you might expect. This is a good selection of the more interesting ones, focused specifically on desktop operating systems.....(free).....GO THERE!
8086 MICROPROCESSOR EMULATOR..........Interactive system to study Assembly Language, Computer Architecture and Reverse Engineering. Microprocessor emulator with integrated assembler. Online reference, examples and tutorials .....(free).....GO THERE!
APPLE - BOOT CAMP..........Install and run the Windows XP operating system on your Mac. You can download a public beta today .....(free).....GO THERE!
ATHENE FOR WINDOWS.......... Athene is an extremely flexible, multi-platform operating system that is designed for desktop PC's and embedded systems. It can be completely reconfigured to suit the requirements of the target system, as well as the needs of individual users. The user interface is totally rewriteable and is famous for its ability to emulate other interfaces such as the Microsoft Windows and Amiga desktop environments. Unlike any other operating system, Athene is specially designed to work both as a 'virtual machine' and as a full operating system installation. This version of the Athene OS environment is designed for running on Windows. Requires an Intel Pentium II / Compatible CPU and 64+ MB RAM. Does not work with the AMD K6-2 CPU (it's not a PII compatible processor).....(free).....GO THERE!
BEOS R5 PERSONAL EDITION FOR WINDOWS.......... BeOS R5 Personal Edition for Windows comes in a self-installing executable, making installation easy and painless. If you're running Windows Millenium Edition, Windows NT, Windows 2000, or Windows XP, you will need to create a boot disk with the included utilities. Otherwise, you can simply double-click the icon installed on your desktop to launch the Be Operating System. This does not in any way alter or harm your Windows installation. BeOS Personal Edition is entirely self-contained within a file installed onto your Windows partition. If you would like to put it in its own partition, however, you may do that from within BeOS.....(free).....GO THERE!
BIG WEBOS ROUNDUP - 10 ONLINE OPERATING SYSTEMS REVIEWED..........According to the author, "While we’re waiting for Google to launch its own Google OS (if the rumours are true, of course), I’ve checked out 10 web operating systems and what they can do. Not many of them feel like finished and fully usable products, but there are some true gems among them".....(free).....GO THERE!
BOOT PART.......... BootPart is an easy tool for adding one partition in the Windows NT multi boot menu (for example, an OS/2 boot manager or Linux partition). Your active partition on your first hard disk must be a FAT16 primary partition. This can be a small partition. Bootpart 2.20 is compatible with Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP.....(free).....GO THERE!
BOOTABLE USB KEYS.......... This document describes how to create a bootable USB key, what the differences are and why some machines only boot on some of the keys around, but not all.....(free).....GO THERE!
CBT TAPE.......... The CBT tape is a collection of freeware for the IBM mainframe MVS and OS/390 operating system environment.....(free).....GO THERE!
COSMOE.......... Cosmoe is a new operating system for x86-based (and soon PowerPC-based) computers. Cosmoe uses a powerful high-level C++ API similar to BeOS and Atheos.....(free).....GO THERE!
CREATING AN XP EMBEDDED SHELL..........Windows XP Embedded provides the ability to build a customized operating system image which contains the components and technologies that are appropriate for your specific device. The image may contain customized device drivers and applications, and in some cases, it would also be appropriate to boot the Windows XP Embedded device directly into a customized application, or shell. Learn how to build a Windows XP Embedded Shell Component. A custom shell component can be selected in the same manner as the standard Explorer Shell. A custom shell can be used to create a fixed function device.....(free).....GO THERE!
EASY BCD.......... For tweaking the new Windows Vista bootloader. With EasyBCD, almost anything is possible. Setting up and configuring Windows boot entries is simple, and there is no easier way to quickly boot right into Linux, Mac OS X, or BSD straight from the Windows Vista bootloader - on the fly, no expert knowledge needed......(free).....GO THERE!
EROS OPERATING SYSTEM..........The Extremely Reliable Operating System--EROS is a new operating system being implemented at the University of Pennsylvania. The system merges some very old ideas in operating systems with some newer ideas about performance and resource management. The result is a small, secure, real-time operating system that provides orthogonal persistence.....(free).....GO THERE!
FC64..........FC64 is a low level Commodore C64 emulator written in AS3 and licensed under the GPL .....(free).....GO THERE!
FREE DOS..........The goal of the FreeDOS Project is to create a free implementation of MS-DOS. DOS is a popular system, and there is plenty of hardware out there that supports DOS. The FreeDOS Project was founded in 1994 by Jim Hall. FreeDOS is not a derivation of MS-DOS - we are not using or referring to any Microsoft code. We are instead using the description of the MS-DOS program as given in publications (such as the user manual) to create a program of our own that follows that spec.....(free).....GO THERE!
FREE OS ZOO PROJECT..........Run several Operating Systems on a single computer. FreeOSZoo provides ready-to-run images of virtual computers, pre-installed with a Free Operating System and a set of popular free software. To get started, you only need to install QEMU and download a single file from the FreeOSZoo project.....(free).....GO THERE!
GAG..........GAG (initials, in spanish, of Graphical Boot Manager) is a Boot Manager program. It's loaded when the computer is turned on and allows you to choose the operating system you want to use. Its main features are: Allows boot of up to 9 different operating systems. It can boot operating systems installed in primary and extended partitions on any available hard disk. Can be installed from nearly all operating systems. GAG doesn't need its own partition. It installs itself in the first track of the hard disk, wich is reserved for these kinds of programs. It can also be installed on a floppy disk, without using the hard disk. .....(free).....GO THERE!
GNUSTEP LIVE CD..........GNUstep Live CD (an OS you can boot and run from cd), includes lots of software for GNUstep, which is a free implementation of the OPENSTEP framework (which was also the base as Cocoa in Mac OS X). It includes an excellent application called Gorm for RAD (Apple Software Design Guidelines). The currently used window manager is Window Maker. GNUstep is a cross-platform, object-oriented framework for desktop application development. Based on the OpenStep specification originally created by NeXT (now Apple), GNUstep enables developers to rapidly build sophisticated software by employing a large library of reusable software components. GNUstep is used in production environments at several organizations.....(free).....GO THERE!
GRAPHICAL BOOT MANAGER.......... GAG (initials, in spanish, of Graphical Boot Manager) is a Boot Manager program. It's loaded when the computer is turned on and allows you to choose the operating system you want to use. Allows boot of up to 9 different operating systems.....(free).....GO THERE!
INSTALL APPLE LEOPARD OS ON YOUR PC.......... Install Leopard on a PC. No Mac necessary......(free).....GO THERE!
INTERESTING DOS PROGRAMS.......... Here are several links to various DOS software and other DOS related websites. Most are freeware. (Thanks to our friends at Geeknik.....(free).....GO THERE!
IPHONE INTERFACE - JAVASCRIPT..........Use your mouse to drag the lists up and down, then try to flick them like you're supposed to on the iPhone. The back button on the phone is also enabled .....(free).....GO THERE!
MAC-WINDOWS INTEROPERABILITY..........Mac OS and Windows can work together in harmony on the same home network, sharing files and printers, mounting one another's drives and using the same equipment, like wireless routers and USB drives. If you're considering a mixed Mac/PC home or office, here's a primer on how the two systems inter-operate (and the few instances when they don't.) .....(free).....GO THERE!
MIR-OS.......... MIR-OS is a 32-bit multi-tasking Operating System for the i386+ developed completely from scratch by a group of Indian programmers. Some of the OS's features include full software multi-tasking, Memory Management (slab allocator), Modularized kernel (ELF module support), Semaphores, FAT12 filesystem, VESA graphics and many other features.....(free).....GO THERE!
MOBA LIVE CD.......... MobaLiveCD is a freeware that will run your Linux LiveCD inside Windows from an ISO, without even having to burn a cd, using the excellent emulator, Qemu. Thanks to gHacks .....(free).....GO THERE!
NACHOS OS.......... An OS designed for teaching operating systems courses. The Nachos distribution comes with: an overview paper, simple baseline code for a working operating system, a simulator for a generic personal computer/workstation, sample assignments, a C++ primer (Nachos is written in an easy-to-learn subset of C++, and the primer helps teach C programmers our subset).....(free).....GO THERE!
NEW OS..........NewOS is a free operating system with full source code available, along with periodic binary snapshots. Currently runs on Intel and AMD single and multiprocessor desktops, Sega Dreamcast. NewOS exists to explore some aspects of modern OS design, and to have fun in the process. According to the developer, "I seemed to have collected a bunch of old non-x86 machines that need something running on them. I figure, 'Hey, why dont I just port my OS over?' The rest is history" .....(free).....GO THERE!
OPERATING SYSTEM COMPARISONS..........The logic of Unix's design choice stands out more clearly when we contrast it with other operating systems. A design overview.....(free).....GO THERE!
PEAR PC..........Emulate PowerPC on an x86 machine. If you're brave and have the time, run OS X under Windows. PearPC is an architecture-independent PowerPC platform emulator capable of running most PowerPC operating systems. The following operating systems were tested and run (to some extent) in PearPC (ie. as clients): Mac OS X 10.3: Runs well with some caveats. Mandrake Linux 9.1 for PPC installer: Runs well. Mandrake Linux 9.1 for PPC after installation: Hard to boot. Runs very well afterwards. Darwin for PPC: Runs well. OpenBSD for PPC: Crashes while booting (accesses PCI in an unsupported way). NetBSD for PPC: Crashes while booting. AIX for PPC: Some people ask about that.....(free).....GO THERE!
PETROS..........PETROS® is a new 32 bit operating system for the 486+ family of machines. It is designed to be compatible with MS-DOS and Windows 95. PETROS® understands FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32 file systems with the Windows 95 long name extensions. The executable file format is a 32 bit file format closely resembling that of Win32 programs. It is intended to maintain full compatibility with win32 programs, and also to support native Java programs.....(shareware, $50 after trial).....GO THERE!
PHP OPERATING SYSTEM (POS).......... POS is new operating system completely written in PHP using the new GTK extension. It offers total platform independence and supports all modern multimedia services from ground. POS is released under the POS license giving you the ability even to eat POS.....(free).....GO THERE!
QEMU CPU EMULATOR..........QEMU is a FAST! processor emulator using dynamic translation to achieve good emulation speed. QEMU has two operating modes: Full system emulation. In this mode, QEMU emulates a full system (for example a PC), including a processor and various peripherials. It can be used to launch different Operating Systems without rebooting the PC or to debug system code. User mode emulation (Linux host only). In this mode, QEMU can launch Linux processes compiled for one CPU on another CPU. It can be used to launch the Wine Windows API emulator or to ease cross-compilation and cross-debugging. As QEMU requires no host kernel patches to run, it is very safe and easy to use.....(free).....GO THERE!
RESTART.......... Restart is a system utility for advanced users with more than one operating system installed on their machine. The program installs an icon in the notification area, and with a single click the computer will shutdown and restart with the selected operating system.....(free).....GO THERE!
REVOLUTION OS..........Revolution OS is a 2001 documentary which traces the history of GNU, Linux, and the open source and free software movements. 1 hr, 25 min.....(free).....GO THERE!
SCARA OS..........According to the author, "ScaraOS is a 32bit mutiboot OS kernel for IA32 (PC/AT) systems. I wrote it to teach myself OS fundamentals and just to have a bit of fun. It already has PCI support, the beginnings of a paged memory management system, and the start of a VFS layer. It supports the basic PC/AT stuff such as timer, PIC, keyboard, floppy".....(free).....GO THERE!
TECHNICAL HISTORY OF APPLE OPERATING SYSTEMS..........Encompasses not only Mac OS X and its relevant ancestors, but the various operating systems that Apple has dabbled with since the company's inception, and many systems that were direct or indirect sources of inspiration.....(free).....GO THERE!
TRS-80 EMULATORS..........Emulators and all the TRS-80 software you can download .....(free).....GO THERE!I
UNOS..........A completely new approach to an embeddable, scalable and distributable multitasking operating system. µnOS has been developed from scratch and is not related to any other existing operating system. It is based on the SPHERE real-time microkernel, whose innovative architecture is the solid basis for the operating system. .....(free).....GO THERE!
VICE..........VICE is a program that runs on Unix, Windows, OS X and many other machines and executes programs intended for the old 8-bit computers. The current version emulates the C64, the C128, the VIC20, almost all PET models, the PLUS4 and the CBM-II (aka C610). .....(free).....GO THERE!
VINTAGE OS.......... Operating systems have evolved from OS/360 to DOS, from Windows 3.1 to Windows XP, from UNIX to Lindows. This site initiates you into some of the history of the OS, and the current status of the older builds (some of which have found uses even today) .....(free).....GO THERE!
VIRTUAL BOX..........VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software. Some of the features of VirtualBox are: Modularity. VirtualBox has an extremely modular design with well-defined internal programming interfaces and a client/server design. This makes it easy to control it from several interfaces at once: for example, you can start a virtual machine in a typical virtual machine GUI and then control that machine from the command line, or possibly remotely. VirtualBox also comes with a full Software Development Kit: even though it is Open Source Software, you don't have to hack the source to write a new interface for VirtualBox. Virtual machine descriptions in XML. The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored entirely in XML and are independent of the local machines. Virtual machine definitions can therefore easily be ported to other computers. Guest Additions for Windows and Linux. VirtualBox has special software that can be installed inside Windows and Linux virtual machines to improve performance and make integration much more seamless. Among the features provided by these Guest Additions are mouse pointer integration and arbitrary screen solutions (e.g. by resizing the guest window). Shared folders. Like many other virtualization solutions, for easy data exchange between hosts and guests, VirtualBox allows for declaring certain host directories as "shared folders", which can then be accessed from within virtual machines .....(free).....GO THERE!
WEB OS RUNDOWN: 45+ WEB OPERATING SYSTEMS..........There are many web operating systems hoping to bring all your usual desktop applications online in one place. Some replicate the entire desktop, while others are startpages with info from around the web.....(free).....GO THERE!
WIN UAE.......... Windows port of the UAE Amiga emulator.....(free).....GO THERE!
YOU OS..........YouOS is a web operating system that lets you run diverse applications within a web browser. Small applications like sticky notes or clocks. Large applications like word processing, mp3 players, and instant messaging. Even better, it's very easy to tweak an existing application or write your own .....(free).....GO THERE!
ZIG ZAG..........We don't know what this is, but we thought you might be interested since you can boot into it. According to the authors, "The ZigZag system is very hard to explain, especially since it resembles nothing else in the computer field that we know of, except perhaps a spreadsheet cut into strips and glued into loops. It is a PRINCIPLED SYSTEM OF INTERCONNECTION. Lists and Spreadsheets are rational ways of connecting things, but they have shortcomings. Hierarchical directories are a standard way of connecting things, but they have extreme shortcomings. The ZigZag structure (we don't know the best term-- zzstructure, zzspace, quantum hyperspace?) is extremely simple but has remarkable properties. It can be built into almost anything, and has default visualizations".....(free).....GO THERE!