I make the specification of non-linux because otherwise this would just become a thread full of obscure distros that do the same thing as a million other distros.
Some lesser known OSs:
- AROS - based on Amiga OS, has some derivatives like IcarOS and MorphOS
- Haiku - based on BeOS
- Redox - Unix-like, made in Rust (might technically count as linux?)
- Serenity - Unix-like, very late 90s look and feel
- Kolibri - Tiny OS, the image is ~44MB. It also has a smaller version that fits in a single floppy.
- PhantomOS - When 3 Russians decide to turn everything about a typical OS upside down.
ReactOS. The “We have Windows at home” OS.
Maybe then it will see proper development to become that which it should be.
I wish I would win top prize of some lottery, I’d donate a good deal of money to ReactOS and pray it finally developed enough to at least manage to make stable installer images
I’d love for FreeBSD to become more mainstream/popular (again)
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This is the only correct answer.
Firefox OS. …really I just want Chrome OS but FOSS by Mozilla. I know it’s anti-privacy, but having sign-in + 1 click deployment on a new device is dope
Haiku is already pretty great to use in my opinion, despite still being in beta; with the right hardware you could easily daily drive it
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HURD, obviously.
I’m happy with any OS as long as it’s GNU.
To name something that hasn’t been mentioned yet, ArcaOS, which based on OS/2. It supports modern hardware and in addition to some preinstalled software, it also has some compatibility layers to run software from other OSs.
I still remember the huge marketing push IBM put into it in the mid-90s. Who would have thought it wouldn’t take off when they never actually showed what it looked like. Just a bunch of people describing it.
MorphOS. It’s still kicking.
Yeah, I was going to say Haiku. It’s surprisingly capable for this day and age (although needs tonnnns of work)
OS/2 Warp
I was looking for this
Definitely Haiku, BeOS had a lot of neat ideas in it.
Haiku, but honestly I’m just happy to see the conversations here
I wish Nokia N900 / N950 with Maemo or Meego OS. And full opensource, full MPL or MIT licensed.
I truly wish SailfishOS could be that replacement but I’ve been burnt too many times already.
L4! Imagine all we could do if the kernel was tiny and everything was user space.
Had a quick read about it, looks like an interesting skeleton to base an end user OS.
