Try ReactOS. I think it's a cool idea and I'm actually very surprised at how far it's come in the last year or two.
Ask HN: Recommend a new operating system that I could try
11–20 of 24 posts
Re: Ask HN: Recommend a new operating system that I could try
#12Playing with eComStation (OS/2) was quite enjoyable.
Re: Ask HN: Recommend a new operating system that I could try
#13I've never tried HaikuOS, but it's high on my list of things to look at. Sometime. It's BeOS revitalized.
Also Minix3. An academic microkernel (although it runs NetBSD userland now, so maybe a bit practical).
And if I could ever get my hands on it, QNX. A practical microkernel.
MenuetOS is a pure assembler based OS that seems nice.
Re: Ask HN: Recommend a new operating system that I could try
#14I would recommend RISC OS. It's available on the Raspberry Pi, and is definitely different. https://www.riscosopen.org/content/ I worked on RISC OS for many years and have deployed live, real-time safety-critical systems on it. It was a joy to use, although I've not been able to use it for several years now.
Can you briefly say what are the things you found good about it?
Re: Ask HN: Recommend a new operating system that I could try
#15Illumos
Re: Ask HN: Recommend a new operating system that I could try
#16Isn't this contradictory? I think almost anything that isn't Unix, Windows or Mac is esoteric, obscure, or both.
There was no mention of Unix, just Linux/Windows/macOS. So Solaris or any of the BSDs could fit.
Re: Ask HN: Recommend a new operating system that I could try
#17What about FreeDOS?
Re: Ask HN: Recommend a new operating system that I could try
#18Try RedoxOS
written in Rust
Re: Ask HN: Recommend a new operating system that I could try
#19It is another Linux distribution, but it's a radically different one: NixOS.
I'm betting that within a few years, Nix will be huge. You can tell when people start to glimpse how it works. It's like, ohhhh, wooow, this really deprecates basically all other ways of structuring distribution management.
Have a look at the PhD thesis of Eelco Dolstra who invented the system. It's both extremely practical and theoretically beautiful. And it happens to be based on a simple lazy functional language.
I installed it on my laptop and servers a couple of years ago and I wouldn't voluntarily switch to any other distro again. It has benefits and advantages that just cascade out from its design, it's almost ridiculous.
I'm really grateful for Nix and NixOS and I've started to contribute to the ecosystem. It basically made me feel happy and optimistic about GNU/Linux again!
Oops, I think I'm a bit tipsy...