What was the first OS you ever used?

[stevefoerster]

The very first one would have been the Atari 8-bit system running on my dad's Atari 400.

I was there, Gandalf....

 

[Tayvl]

GEM OS on my Amstrad, 1988. Actually had color...

 

[onebignerd]

Exposed to Unix on mainframes through dumb terminals before PCs existed. The first PC was an Apple II from where my Dad worked, then I bought an original Macintosh. Than moved to a Intel 386 running DOS and on. Tried returning to Mac last year, don't care for it anymore.

 

[Mtyson8]

My Friends 1995 Packard Bell Legend 822CDT. Win 95, Pentium 100MHz 16MB RAM, 1.2GB HD. We were talking serious power.
First Game? Mech Warrior 2
I remember the graphics didn't get any better than this, especially the intro movie

 

[wizardB]

Somewhere around 1973, I started programming with Fortran, long before the two shysters Gates and Jobs sold their less-than-spectacular OSes to the world.

 

[Tyler Dur Den]

Apple DOS 3.3, circa 1980.

 

[Gezzer]

DOS XL, which came with my Indus GT drive I used with my Atari 800. It was menu-driven, but did have a command line interface.

The first PC OS I used was OS/2 Warp 4 when we got computers (not just mainframe terminals) at work. My first post-Atari home PC had Windows 98.

Wow, another 800 user! I had the first edition of the 800 (Looked more like a toy than a computer IMHO), so I guess that was kinda my very first OS. My Mom had a 486 running Windows 3.1 that I fooled around with. But my first PC was a 166mhz Pentium MMX running Windows 95 OSR 2 so I did more than boot games and do a bit of messing with the DOS. Windows 95, was a step up in the OS user experience, but I swear I spent as much time trying to keep it stable than I did playing games. The idea of editing Bats and Pifs still gives me a shudder. 98 was the first OS that I didn't have to do that as much. XP was the first really stable and user friendly OS M$ put out IMHO.

 

[John Staerck]

1965 - ICL (International Computers Limited, now owned by Fujitsu) Model 1904E running GEORGE3.
Missed getting my hands on a Ferranti Pegasus by a few months when the 1904E replaced it.
First personal computer was an Apple IIE.

 

[wiyosaya]

HP-25C programmable calculator followed by Sinclair ZX-80.

 

[hrowder]

Wow... reading some of these posts brings back memories. I had a friend who bought a TRS 80 and wanted to use it to run his retail jewelry business. I worked for him for a while and he talked me into trying to write a database for his business using basic! I knew nothing, but tried to do it... unsuccessfully I must admit. Later I married a girl and bought a Franklin Ace 1000 which used a version of the Apple II operating system you loaded fresh from tape every time you turned it on! I couldn't afford the floppy drives, let alone a hard disk drive (good used car costs the same). I do remember playing around with CPM too but I was struggling to upgrade the Franklin to make it more useful. Got a 64Kb memory card for it at one of the first computer shows in San Francisco at the time. If I remember correctly my first PC OS was DRDOS or maybe MSDOS but I wanted to use the first Windows add on when it came out and MS made sure DRDOS wouldn't run it very well so from then on it was MSDOS and then Windows (Was it 3.1? I can't remember!). Even from the beginning I built my PC's because buying one outright was waaayyy too expensive. Back then there was BYTE magazine which was as thick as a phone book but had lots of articles on building your own PC. I think Pournel used to write articles for them back then. And so it began..!

 

[kaosken]

1981 CTOS Convergent Technologies Operating System. Before PCs. Had LAN in the Box over 422 cable. Green screen text based, 384K RAM, 5MB 5" hard drive all for $14,000.