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
GNU Hurd and Plan9.
This is the only correct answer.
I’d love for FreeBSD to become more mainstream/popular (again)
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
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
Redox isn’t Linux, it uses its own kernel. I want this one to succeed above all others, just because Rust was born to perform this kind of application: guaranteed memory safety when dealing with tens of thousands of lines of code handling hundreds of moving parts running thousands of different tasks, all at a very low level.
I’ll second Plan 9, just because it sounds like scifi and truly takes advantage of how interconnected all computing hardware has become.
Third place goes to anything based on GNU Hurd. The microkernel architecture intrigues me, and I’d like to know how it effects the end user. Plus I’m just a big fan of the copyleft/FOSS aspect.
Also, I’d just like any mobile device alternative that’s not AOSP, and Linux seems like a bad fit for mobile in general. Why do we need a fully-featured, all-purpose kernel when we’re only gonna put it on a known number of SoCs and therefore a known set of hardware configurations? We could be optimizing the hell out of our privacy-friendly mobile OSes, but instead we’ve shackled ourselves to google or linux
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.
OS/2 Warp
I was looking for this
Yeah, I was going to say Haiku. It’s surprisingly capable for this day and age (although needs tonnnns of work)
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.
