Tired of Windows, Mac OS X, Linux or whatever operating system that you're currently using on your computer, and feel like trying somethingnew? Or perhaps you want to test the cutting edge in operating system design or find out what the platform of the future is going to be like.Or you may simply want to try out a system that your friends are using to see whether you can use it for your computer.This page lists a variety of free operating systems available that you can download and install on your computer. Many of the systems are alsoopen source so you can also tinker with the system, find out how it works, and learn from it.
Examples of GUI operating systems are: System 7.x Windows 98 Windows CE. Multi-user - A multi-user operating system allows for multiple users to use the same computer at the same time and different times. See the multi-user definition for a complete definition. Examples of operating systems that would fall into this category are: Linux Unix Windows 2000.
Note that you do not actually have to have an unused computer to install any of these systems. An easy way is to install one or more of thesesystems into a 'virtual machine', which can run on your existing system. This allows you to try out the system without forgoing the comfortsand convenience of your existing system (be it Windows, Mac, Linux or otherwise). You can get a virtual machine or emulator from theFree x86 / PC Emulators and Virtual Machines page.An alternative method, albeit less convenient, is to install the new system in another partition on your hard disk,side-by-side with your existing system, in something known as a dual-boot (or multi-boot) configuration. This has the advantage ofallowing you to experience the actual speed of the operating system (which you won't get in a virtual machine). If you want to do this,you may be interested in getting a partitioning utility to create the new partition (and perhaps resize your existing partition to make space) from theFree Partitioning Software page.If you are trying an OS that doesn't already come with its own boot manager, you may also want to download a multi-boot managerfrom the Free Boot Managers and Multi-Boot Loaders page.
As always, you should back up your computerbefore you mess with it in such a drastic way (whether you take the virtual machine or the dual-boot route). Free backup software can befound on the Free Hard Disk Backup and Restore,Hard Disk Image and Cloning Utilities page.
Related Pages
Free Alternative Operating Systems
This is an x86 32-bit operating system written completely in assembly language, that is optimised('optimized' in US English)for speed. Only a single process can execute at a time, although that process can have multiple threads. Since the processruns at ring 0, it has complete access to all hardware. The system (by design) does not support virtual memory (paging)nor indeed even provide any memory allocation API (other than functions to get the conventional and extended memorysize and the top of usable memory); your program manages memory itself. It does however have a TCP/IP stack(for Internet support), support for some Ethernet cards, comes with an integrated development environment (IDE),and a basic user interface. The entire OS is very small, and (at the time I write this) can apparently fit intoless than 64KB of memory. (The entire download file is also very small: about 8.8 MB at the time I checked it.)You don't have to install to your hard disk if you only want to try it: the OS can be booted from a USB flash drive,a floppy disk or a CD.
Qubes OS is an operating system designed with security foremost in mind. It does this by using 'security by isolation' wherenot only are programs isolated from each other, but even some system components (like the networking and storage subsystems) are alsosandboxed. This is done with the aid of virtualisation('virtualization'). This open source system is based on Xen, Linux and the X Window system. At the time thisentry was written, the software is still under development (that is, it's not ready for production use).
This is a research project by Microsoft intended to use the advances in software engineering in the design and implementation of anoperating system. The operating system runs every program, device driver and system extension in its own isolated space, which theycall Software Isolated Process (SIP). Programs cannot share memory or even modify their own code. The aim is to make the system morereliable and robust. The research development kit (RDK) for Singularity contains the source code, build tools, test suites and documentation forthe project. It is licensed for academic non-commercial use only (read their licence for the details).
Chromium OS is the open source operating system from Google that will form the basis of Google's Chrome OS. It uses a modifiedLinux kernel and is primarilyintended for devices like netbooks. As such, the main user interface is probably the web browser, with most (if not all) applicationsthat a user runs being web applications. Although the system is still under development, the source code is already availablefor you to download and play with.
Plan 9 is a research system originally designed by Ken Thompson, Rob Pike, Dave Presotto and Phil Winterbottom. Unlike many other operating systems,all resources in Plan 9 are accessed like files in a hierarchical file system. While Unix-type systems already provided such an encapsulation, withmany devices mapped to the file system, Plan 9 goes even further, so that even things like the network and user interface window are also accessedin this way, through a standard protocol called '9P'. The operating system can also (optionally) work as a distributed system, with its componentsdistributed among different hardware platforms. The system is released under the GNU General Public License.
MINIX is a POSIX compliant operating system for the PC (although ports to Xscale and PowerPC are supposed to be underway) with a microkernelarchitecture (where the operating system core, or kernel, does the bare mininum and everything else is implemented separately [in user space]).It has TCP/IP networking, supports the X Window system, runs the GNU compiler tools and many other Unix utilities, has device drivers that run asuser processes, etc. The system is released as open source.
This is a complete software stack for mobile devices comprising the base operating system as well as applicationsthat run on it. The operating system itself is a fork of the Linux kernel, while the software in the stack areJava applications. The system runson ARM processors, although there is apparently also an x86 version. Android is currently used on many devicesincluding smartphones and netbooks.
Linux began its life as a Unix-clone, but has over time become the dominant Unix-type platform in use today (at the time I write this). Createdby Linus Torvalds in 1991, it is commonly found on servers, but can also be found in embedded devices, desktop computers, and so on. The coreof the system, the Linux kernel, is licensed under the GNU General Public License. As distributed, Linux is packaged differently by a variety ofvendors, with each vendor adding its own software mix and external visual appearance to the overall package. These packages are called 'distributions'in the Linux world, and you can find a list of the most popular distributions from the above link. Instead of installing a distribution, you canalso download a Linux Live-CD which allowsyou to boot from the CD/DVD into a complete Linux system without installing anything.
BSD started out as a derivative of the original AT&T Unix system, although today, the modern open source BSD-based systems no longer has any AT&T code.It is released under a permissive BSD licence. See the page linked-to above for more details as well as links to the various free BSD systems.
BeOS is an OS from the 1990s designed for its own hardware that has since been ported to the PC. It was optimized for work with digital mediaand has many modern operating system features. Although the original BeOS is no longer being maintained, an open source project called Haikucontinues its development. See the page linked to above for details.
MSDOS, PC-DOS, and its clones, DR-DOS and FreeDOS, were operating systems widely used on PCs in the 1980s and early 1990s. The last I checked,the open source equivalent, FreeDOS, is still under development and runs fine on modern hardware.
Windows clones and emulation layers let you run Windows programs without having to buy a copy of Windows. See the page linked-to formore details.
Symbian, from Nokia, is an operating system for smartphones and other mobile devices. It uses a microkernel architecture, has real-time features,supports pre-emptive multitasking and memory protection, and is designed with the philosophy that resources are scarce. It is apopular mobile operating system in current (at the time this was written) use. Update (28 November 2010): TheSymbian website will apparently be closed on 17 December 2010. If you want to download the source code, you'll have to do itbefore that date. Update (2011): Well, I just checked, and it's no longer available.
OpenSolaris is a Unix derivative, based on Solaris, which is in turn based on Unix System V Release 4. It runs on the x86 family ofprocessors as well as SPARC (UltraSPARC, SPARC64). The majority of the code is released as open source under the Common Developmentand Distribution License (CDDL), although there are apparently also some binary-only components released under the OpenSolaris Binary License.Update (August 2010): with the purchase of Sun by Oracle, and consequently Solaris, it looks like OpenSolaris will no longer beupdated or maintained. Update (25 Mar 2013): Another one bites the dust. It looks like OpenSolaris is no longer available.
- How to Register Your Own Domain Name - how to get your own domain name
It will appear on your page as:
It’s a bit of a slow news week in technology this week due the US celebrating Independence Day this past 4 July, so Ars decided to repost this article about BFS, and I’m nothing if not a sucker for BeOS content, so here it goes.
The Be operating system file system, known simply as BFS, is the file system for the Haiku, BeOS, and SkyOS operating systems. When it was created in the late ’90s as part of the ill-fated BeOS project, BFS’s ahead-of-its-time feature set immediately struck the fancy OS geeks. That feature set includes:
- A 64-bit address space
- Use of journaling
- Highly multithreaded reading
- Support of database-like extended file attributes
- Optimization for streaming file access
A dozen years later, the legendary BFS still merits exploration – so we’re diving in today, starting with some filesystem basics and moving on to a discussion of the above features. We also chatted with two people intimately familiar with the OS: the person who developed BFS for Be and the developer behind the open-source version of BFS.
A good read.