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I was thinking today, while trying to beat win95 into submission, that we discuss what we want in JOS, rarely do we talk about what under no circumstances should ever become part of JOS. I want this page to not so much be a place where we can nitpick but to be a place where we can point out flaws in other OS's so we can avoid them before hand and hopefully find ways around them.
--DigiGod

Windows

Pros:

• Well known, realitively easy User Interface
• Many applications avalible for it
• Case-insensitive filenames

Cons:

• Hard to configure
• Crashes a lot
• Only allows a single application to be associated with each file type
• Impossible to uninstall some programs
• Rebooting required far too often when installing SW or making system changes.
• You can't access the desktop without minimizing all of your programs (workaround in IE4/Win98 or PowerToys).
• Almost complete obfusication of configuration data (Registry)
• Was designed by many teams which didn't communicate properly, and it shows.
• You can't kill processes, find out what program initiated a process, or even find out what processes are running. (¿Can you?)(You can in NT, not sure about 95)
• Your damned icons never stay the way you want them
• Stupid drive-letter disk naming scheme (A: B: C:, etc..)
• Windows95pronconDiscussion

MacOS

Pros:

• Standard keyboard layout includes access to extended Latin characters. And a rich library of keyboard layouts is standard.
• Easy to use as a general rule
• Resource fork in files
• Case-insensitive filenames
• Every good feature that windows has (M$ copied nearly everything from the Mac) -- DanielHarris 17 MAY 1998
• Comes with Java!

Con:

• Trash can icon is used for things other than deletion, such as ejecting a diskette. Nothing is scarier for the habitual Windows user. (¡Yikes! ¿Is this going to delete everything on my diskette?)

BeOS Refer to BeOSExperience also...

Pros:

• Good file system: MIME support, journaling, supports infinite (?) attribute settings for file types.
• EXTREMELY multi-threaded
• Symmetric multi-processing (e.g. a program can utilize >1 processors)
• Pretty easy/nice GUI to use.

Cons:

• Lacks support for a lot of hardware (it's still in pre-release though)
• The network apps were lacking (email, browser, ftp, etc), although it is still real early...

Unix (and various relatives)

Pros:

• Multi-user oriented.
• Endlessly configurable
• Is securable, if not secure
• Long file names

Cons:

• Too easy to run insecurely (e.g. many network services running from the get-go, like sendmail/finger/ftp/etc, make the novice user a target).
• Unintuitive command names. ¿Who could ever guess what "grep" means? (Anyone that can "grok" a "man" page! ;)
• Case-sensitive filenames.
• You have to be a techie to configure it.

AmigaDOS

Pros:

• Easy to use for beginners
• Advanced users could easy delve deeper into it
• Very low memory requirements
• Very good multitasking
• Datatypes - Any program can access any type of data, which as an apropriate datatype installed (like contenthandler)
• Enhancements kept the OS quite uptodate
• OS alone is stable

Cons:

• No memory-protection - means OS is stable as long applications are
• No OS progress since 94, except for public domain enhancements
• Multiple enhancements (if you use them) led to a overpatched OS

Commodore 64

Pros:

• floppy drive
• Simplicity

Cons:

• ummm... 64K ram? =)

OS/2

Pros:

• Truly object-oriented GUI (OOUI) - The Workplace Shell
• UI based on SOM (CORBA)
• Consistency
• Great development environment
• Runs Windows/DOS applications
• Case-insensitive filesystem
• Comes with Java :)
• Excellent thread support - MattAlbrecht 6-AUG-1998

Cons:

• Relatively poor device driver support
• Always a (few) version(s) behind for most apps (1-2-3, WordPerfect, CorelDRAW, etc.)
• Used old DOS-style CONFIG.SYS for most hardward configuration, and binary .INI files for some video stuff.
• Network support wasn't designed-in from the beginning.
• No logon security like Unix or WinNT
• Filesystem security only through LAN Server

OS NAME

Pros:

• example of something good about stated OS

Cons:

• example of something bad about stated OS

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