What was the first computer system

Hi,
I am wondering...
What was the fist operating system ever made?

What was the first computer ever made???

Computer: ENIAC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
OS: whatever the ENIAC used and whether it actually constitutes what we consider to be an operating system

EDIT: Apparently, the first computers did not have OSes (here).

As in before today's computers, when they took up a whole room?

The first OS that ran on modern computers was DOS.

DOS is actually an acronym for disk operating system and is symbolic of a number of OSes (here). As to what DOS came first, I have no idea.

EDIT: I would venture that it might be DOS/360, released in 1966 (here).

If he means MS DOS no way. Apple's DOS was out way before that and CPM by Gary Killdall that shall we say Microsoft sort of modeled MS DOS (First called PC DOS) after Gary's CPM. Those were out in the 70's before Microsoft's DOS. Xerox had an OS that was way ahead of it's time which started in the 70's and had the first successful GUI.

There is a lot more but thought I would at least let it be known MS DOS was not the first OS out there for home computers.

You're all wrong.

I know it wasn't OS/2!

The first real programmable computer was designed to break German codes during WW2

Colossus computer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The first real modern desktop OS was, as has been said, developed by Xerox and inspired Apple to develop their own

Xerox Star - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There is an excellent film which sound very geeky, but is a very watchable and well made film / documentary that shows the early years of Apple and Microsoft, including Steve Jobs and Wozniak's visit to the Xerox labs

Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999) (TV)

dtravis7 said:

Xerox had an OS that was way ahead of it's time which started in the 70's and had the first successful GUI..

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I just looked it up and Xerox built something called the Xerox Alto and to quote the wikipedia article (here): "From these inventions, Xerox PARC created the Xerox Alto in 1973, a small minicomputer similar to a modern workstation or personal computer. This machine can be considered the first true personal computer, given its versatile combination of a cathode-ray-type screen, mouse-type pointing device, and a QWERTY-type alphanumeric keyboard. But the Alto was never commercially sold, as Xerox itself could not see the sales potential of it. In 1979, several Apple Computer employees, including Steve Jobs, visited Xerox PARC, interested in seeing their developments. Jobs and the others saw the commercial potential of the GUI and mouse, and redirected development of the Apple Lisa to incorporate these technologies. In 1980, Steven Jobs invited several key PARC's researchers to join his company in order that they would be able to fully develop and implement their ideas."

Good call dtravis7!

BlueMac said:

You're all wrong.

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I may be wrong but so are you. The first computer is this fine machine:



It uses the best OS ever developed - the human brain.

iPod Nano said:

I know it wasn't OS/2!

Click to expand...

OS/2 Warp was a superb OS. I ran Warp III 24 hours a day running my BBS system and never one crash. Very stable. Not the first but very good. To bad IBM marketing destroyed it.

Van, thanks for posting the url to the Xerox Alto. I was going to and the phone rang so I hit save. That system was so ahead of it's time.

dtravis7 said:

OS/2 Warp was a superb OS. I ran Warp III 24 hours a day running my BBS system and never one crash. Very stable. Not the first but very good. To bad IBM marketing destroyed it.

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I just read something on OSNews (here) from a little over a year ago about OS/2: "Each new release of OS/2 brought with it new leaps in technological sophistication, but by the late 90s IBM had decided that competing in the same market space as Microsoft Windows wasn't worth bothering with and all but gave up on OS/2." I have to say that if IBM wanted to, they could have beat MS. If MS is big and powerful, IBM is a giant. I wish IBM had held on...

I have to say though that I kind of want to try OS/2 now.

OS/2 still exists. My dad still uses it! However, I myself am not fond of it, I find it crashes and is quite rudimentary compared to Mac OS X. Try it if you please. eCS (the newest edition) is fairly cheap. You can run it in Parallels or VirtualBox.

vansmith said:

I just looked it up and Xerox built something called the Xerox Alto and to quote the wikipedia article (here): "From these inventions, Xerox PARC created the Xerox Alto in 1973, a small minicomputer similar to a modern workstation or personal computer. This machine can be considered the first true personal computer, given its versatile combination of a cathode-ray-type screen, mouse-type pointing device, and a QWERTY-type alphanumeric keyboard. But the Alto was never commercially sold, as Xerox itself could not see the sales potential of it. In 1979, several Apple Computer employees, including Steve Jobs, visited Xerox PARC, interested in seeing their developments. Jobs and the others saw the commercial potential of the GUI and mouse, and redirected development of the Apple Lisa to incorporate these technologies. In 1980, Steven Jobs invited several key PARC's researchers to join his company in order that they would be able to fully develop and implement their ideas."

Good call dtravis7!

I may be wrong but so are you. The first computer is this fine machine:

It uses the best OS ever developed - the human brain.

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What is that computer used for???

The abacus? It uses the free but varied in quality OS known as the human brain to do calculations .

One thing about the OS/2 I was talking about and using. This was back when there was just Windows 95 and the early NT besides the early Linux distros. Windows 95 crashed running the same software sometimes 2-5 times a week. You really can not compare OS/2 Warp 3 to OSX. OSX was not even around back then. It was Mac OS 7-8 at that time and there is no comparison to a full Preemptive multitasking system like OS/2 and older Mac OS that had a shared multitasking finder and shared memory.

I watched a video of some guy giving a presentation about OS/2 to a crowd. Man, was he ever excited about the features that just seem so normal today. One of the features was emailing a calendar appointment to a contact, which involved dragging the appointment to the desktop, right clicking it, choosing ccMail (or something like that) to email it and then you still had to send the actual email. To be fair, I'm sure what we think of as groundbreaking today will seem so mundane in the future.

On that note, many of you have re-sparked my interest in odd alternative OSes. I'm off to fool with Syllable and Haiku.

It's not very common here, but is in fact a very common OS in Europe even today. And although many may not think so, it is still being developed by small little companies. Like I said, today every feature in there seems outdated and it's not always that stable. The Workplace Shell just doesn't have enough channels for commands to travel on, so things will get jammed up from time to time. I will be excited when the Voyager OS replacement for OS/2 comes out in a few years. It may or may not be very good. They are considering a UNIX (or was it Linux?) kernel for Voyager, so it should prove interesting.

vansmith said:

On that note, many of you have re-sparked my interest in odd alternative OSes. I'm off to fool with Syllable and Haiku.

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I have a close friend who is very active in messing with Haiku. Let me know what you think. It's still in maybe Alpha.

Can you run it with virtualization? is it free? I'd love to try it too.

dtravis7 said:

I have a close friend who is very active in messing with Haiku. Let me know what you think. It's still in maybe Alpha.

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I tested it a while back but not for long. I tried it a few hours ago (had to take a DQ break first ) and I can honestly say I was pretty lost. Haiku is completely different than what I am used too. I felt like such a newbie as I had to look up how to install software :Blushing:.

As for the OS itself, it was amazingly fast. The boot time in a VM is incredible - I can't imagine what it would be like on a real machine. In a VM, it took 21secs to boot from the start button to fully loaded desktop. It may be pre-alpha but it was solid in my tinkering, which tends to break things . There are some new paradigms I have to get used to such as the DeskBar and finding programs. I also love it how all the apps look to be BeOS specific or homegrown except for VLC . The fact that all the CLI Unix programs are there is always a plus in my eyes as well. One thing I did notice though is that the decompression program (forget what it's called right now) didn't show any progress whatsoever which is a mild annoyance. All in all though, you can tell your friend that they are doing a great job!

iPod Nano said:

Can you run it with virtualization? is it free? I'd love to try it too.

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It is free and open source. You can get VMWare images here, which appear to be generated daily. Those images will work with VirtualBox as well (since VBox supports VMWare images) - I can guarantee this from personal experience .