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Ask HN: Recommend a new operating system that I could try

10 points by samoright ↗ HN
Hello HN community,

I have been a long time user of Linux system (Fedora, RedHat, CentOS, Debian and Ubuntu). I have also worked on Windows and Mac.

While programming I realized that every new programming language I learnt introduced me to new ways of doing things that I think has helped me mature as a programmer.

I am looking for a similar experience with operating systems. What operating do you suggest that would help me to explore something new and interesting?

A couple of constraints:

* Should not be another Linux distribution

* Should not be too esoteric or obscure operating system. I know this is subjective. If this filters out all operating systems you might have suggested, then please suggest the least esoteric or the least obscure one.

* Good documentation or clean source code is a plus because it would help me to study and learn it more effectively

23 comments

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PaulHoule
Isn't this contradictory? I think almost anything that isn't Unix, Windows or Mac is esoteric, obscure, or both.
jetti
There was no mention of Unix, just Linux/Windows/macOS. So Solaris or any of the BSDs could fit.
akulbe
Solaris is dying. Not worth learning, IMHO.
f_allwein
> * Should not be another Linux distribution

> * Should not be an esoteric or obscure operating system

sounds like this pretty much filters out any OS... maybe try Haiku? https://www.haiku-os.org/

panic
FreeBSD satisfies all your criteria (all the BSDs do, really). It's pretty similar to Linux, though.
wooptoo
I second FreeBSD, it's what I'd use if Linux were not available. Maybe look into other BSDs like NetBSD or OpenBSD.

NetBSD even runs on a toaster if you have any lying around :-) https://www.embeddedarm.com/blog/netbsd-toaster-powered-by-t...

samoright
I am inclined to try either FreeBSD or OpenBSD.

FreeBSD comes with the bonus that it is supported on some cloud and VPS offerings, so whatever I learn can come useful for practical purpose.

But OpenBSD also seems like a great idea because I have read great things about its security and documentation.

I am not inclined to try NetBSD because it seems to offer neither of these advantages.

Is my assessment right so far or very misguided?

Is there anyone who has used at least two of these three BSDs? What do they recommend?

zzzcpan
I have experience with all three, but I disagree that you can take away a lot from them after Linux. An OS from a user perspective is essentially a package, configuration and service manager. And to learn something new and valuable in either of those categories you'd need to go into very different direction. Like docker, nix, guix for package and configuration manager, erlang supervision trees for services.
ColinWright
I 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.

vram22
Can you briefly say what are the things you found good about it?
ColinWright
Several:

* It was bordering on trivial to write programs with a decent GUI;

* The light-weight, integral message passing system was a joy to use;

* It was clean to use;

* It was small and fast to start up.

It's hard to put it into words, it was simply fun to use, and I could enjoy writing real software.

vram22
Thanks. I will see if I can try it out at some time, if it works on regular PCs, or I may have to get a Pi. The point about easy GUI development interests me, as well as the speed and the message passing system. I had tried out QNX some time ago, when Photon was the GUI system for it, from a CD that came with a computer magazine. It was small too. It was also a message passing system, IIRC, and was also very fast, I remember noticing that, though I only tried it for a short while.
RUG3Y
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.
zura
Playing with eComStation (OS/2) was quite enjoyable.
Tomte
I'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.

wooptoo
I've tried most of them. I was impressed with BeOS back in the day and have used it for a few weeks as the main OS on my machine. I tried Haiku for a short time a few years ago. It had potential to be a great OS but it has become irrelevant now. The industry has moved on at such a fast pace that Haiku would need many man-years of development to catch up. I look with sympathy at the development team and their effort knowing that one day they'll lay down their tools and stop working on it for good.

I've only tried QNX very briefly about 15 years ago or so. It had the Neutrino kernel as far as I remember. Unfortunately I don't have any deep insight into it. It's basically a RTOS, with a micro-kernel, with a UNIX compatible environment. I remember the company advertising that it can work on industrial-grade equipment, where a RTOS is needed. I'm surprised to see that Google is now developing something very similar with Magenta but aimed at the desktop.

jetti
What about FreeDOS?
r0br0dz
Try RedoxOS written in Rust
mbrock
It 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...

le-mark
Plan 9, or Oberon are two other options.