A Technical History of Apple's Operating Systems – Amit Singh posts a free, 140-page PDF "bonus chapter" to his Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach.
posted by timeistight on Jul 25, 2006 - 18 comments

"Oops. Now his master boot record started with 'ATDT' and the university modem pool phone number. I think he implemented permission checking the following day." Linus Torvald's former officemate shares his lighthearted recollections about the creation — and creator — of Linux.
posted by nakedcodemonkey on Feb 16, 2006 - 7 comments

What's that pol running? "For what it's worth, the Republican National Committee is running Microsoft IIS on Windows 2000, while the Democratic National Committee is running Apache on Linux. As of this writing, November 5, 2003, the RNC has an uptime of 4.26 days (maximum of 39.04) and a 90-day moving average of 16.91. The DNC has an uptime of 445.02 days (also the maximum) and a 90-day moving average of 395.38 days." Also broken down by individual campaigns.
posted by cedar on Nov 7, 2003 - 9 comments

The emerging internet operating system. Tim O'Reilly has seen the future. "It's just not evenly distributed yet." Alpha Geeks know things we'll all be learning soon: the Internet is an operating system. And they're busy building applications for it. Bonus:the article is heavily annotated for further reading!
Yes, he's talking to Apple developers, and applauds OS X, but this is not an Apple post. If you prefer, he makes the same points and applauds Sun in a speech to their developers.
posted by putzface_dickman on Aug 23, 2002 - 4 comments

Ancient OS may be the best weapon against hackers. I thought this was great, aging Operating Systems such as Solaris and older versions of Mac Os are becoming valuable tools against electronic attacks, simply because they *are* older. (Anyone got the full set of floppies for System 7?) Link from RobotWisdom
posted by jeremias on Jun 7, 2002 - 27 comments

Microsoft's newest version of Windows.... billed as the most secure ever, contains several serious flaws that allow hackers to steal or destroy a victim's data files across the Internet or implant rogue computer software. The company released a free fix Thursday.

A Microsoft official acknowledged that the risk to consumers was unprecedented because the glitches allow hackers to seize control of all Windows XP operating system software without requiring a computer user to do anything except connect to the Internet.
posted by bkdelong on Dec 20, 2001 - 60 comments

San Diego Opensource Convention Ends With "Positive Feelings"
The conference included a debate (documented in real time!) between Microsoft open source---what's the opposite of evangelist?---Craig Mundie and the CTO of RedHat Michael Tiemann entitled "shared source versus open source." Tiemann was feisty and "baited" Mundie, who remained cool as a cucumber. I thought we could all benefit from some postgame analysis here... (1, 2, 3)
posted by rschram on Jul 27, 2001 - 4 comments

VMware. Run the Operating Systems You Need, All at Once, on the One Machine.
posted by Zool on May 8, 2001 - 16 comments

Bill Gates created MacOS X? I came across this memo written by Bill Gates on July 29, 1985 to John Sculley, then president of Apple Computer. In the memo, Gates writes about the possibility of licensing the Macintosh operating system to third party companies. Here's where it get wierd, Bill suggests that Apple talk to AT&T about migrating the MacOS as a GUI layer on top of their UNIX. Makes me wonder who had the idea first, Steve Jobs or Bill Gates?
posted by Brilliantcrank on Apr 10, 2001 - 7 comments

Codeweavers, Windows software on Linux. I think the average consumer might be very interested in Linux, if they could run their current Windows programs on it. Another step closer to the end of Bill Gates' evil rule.
posted by Zool on Dec 14, 2000 - 19 comments

Multics, Requiescat in Pace. Wow. What does one say.
posted by baylink on Nov 12, 2000 - 3 comments

IBM's Linux commercial. Part of their Avery Brooks "serious software" ad campaign, which I like a lot, I have to say.
posted by dan_of_brainlog on Jul 22, 2000 - 2 comments

On a lighter note... Joe Pranevich explains why Linux 2.4 isn't *really* "late".
posted by baylink on May 5, 2000 - 4 comments

Now that Sun's Solaris 8 OS is going to be free, and the BeOS too, I wonder if it's too little, too late. Will we see jumps in their respective shares of the OS market? Or is this a last ditch attempt to compete with Linux?
posted by mathowie on Jan 27, 2000 - 0 comments

So I was checking out the Windows 2000 compatibility site, and the first step in determining if your system will be ok with the new OS is identifying your computer. When you go to the first upgrade page, you have to identify your computer by manufacturer, but the site only lists 10 different PC makers. Ten PC makers!?! I don't know if Microsoft knows this, but there are things called "clones" out there, and there are "millions" of different manufacturers of them. My computer's not in the list, even though it's from a prominent manufacturer, I guess the compatibility website isn't compatible with my computer.
posted by mathowie on Jan 18, 2000 - 3 comments