Born-Again Technology – Even Better the Second Time Around

The progress of technology development has taught us one thing: evolution is ruthless. Thousands of devices, software systems, consoles, and gadgets have come and gone, only a few of them see any kind of mass adoption. And sometimes when they see mass adoption, they go extinct anyway. Not necessarily because they went out of style, but just because the company behind them folded under or discontinued it.

That event raises a particularly strangled cry from users when it happens to an operating system. No matter how quirky and niche-based a system is, there will always be those few users in the corner who mourn it like a friend when it dies. And when the fans demand it, the system is sometimes resurrected, rescued, or re-built from scratch. If you're a veteran geek, you might be interested in one of these systems, and perhaps even be drawn to contribute some volunteer work to the project, since they're all open source and free software.

Plan Nine From Bell Labs

Modern incarnation: Inferno

Plan Nine From Bell Labs was best described by geek demigod Eric S. Raymond in his chapter "Plan 9: The Way the Future Was" from his online book. It was intended to be the "next Unix", but just never broke out of the experimental stage. To the modern user, it feels like the operating system from another dimension. Very smart, fast, and efficient, but the interface is very hard to learn and it's bare of features for the average home user. But the system won big in high-tech niches where networks were more important than individual desktops, and of course with the really hard-core hobby geeks.

Today, Vita Nuova Holdings is the company that is working on Inferno. They've recognized that Plan 9 was actually years ahead of its time - we're just now building devices that can make the best use of its capabilities. It is ideal for embedding and virtual systems, as well as cross-platform distributed systems. Hello, can you say "cloud computing"? Inferno may yet become the next big thing.

BeOS

Modern incarnation: Haiku

Who could ever forget the Be Box? This sporty system briefly showed its face in the world computing market, right when IBM PCs running Windows were beginning to take off. The company that made it earned a reputation for being feisty and tenacious, but just didn't manage to fasten a tooth in the market share. Fans worshiped it - most notably science fiction icon Neal Stephenson in his essay "In the Beginning was the Command Line", where he praised the system as the worthy successor to Apple, Microsoft, and Linux, after having tried all four.

The fans themselves have rallied round this also-ran system to at least re-create the BeOS operating system as an open source project, by the name of Haiku. No word yet on whether they can get a modern version ofthe Be Box to run it on, but in the meantime they're aiming it at the x86 and PowerPC platforms.

Amiga

Modern incarnation: AROS

If you're even reading this site, the Amiga needs no introduction from us. It is the canonical case of the platform that was discontinued and fans have been pining away for it ever since. What made the Amiga so great? It combined the speed, flexibility, and economy of the IBM desktop with the awesome graphics and sound, beauty of design, and power of the Apple desktop. In many ways, it was so far ahead of its time that any Amiga still running today is pressed into service in industries as diverse as live theater, cruise ships, and amusement parks. What doomed the Amiga was the failure of its parent company, Commodore, who in spite of their earlier success basically just failed at business, period.

Do you want to be rich? Scrape up the cash to buy the rights to the Amiga name and design, and start producing them again. Your market is in the tens of millions, and they'll build shrines to you. In the meantime, the AROS Research Operating System is the modern effort to re-create at least the AmigaOS operating system on modern machines. Although that's not the point of Amigas, it's at least a step while we all wait for Bill Gates to buy it or something and start making them again.

Solaris

Modern incarnation: Open Solaris

Wait, Solaris isn't dead, yet! Well, no, but in the words of Frank Zappa when asked if jazz was dead, "It isn't, but it smells funny." Sun Microsystems, makers of the Java programming language, has still been selling and supporting Solaris all this time - in fact, they're the most successful classic-style Unix system still existing today. But the platform has waned drastically on the desktop, being more the product for a server room.

Be that as it may, Sun has released the rights to build and distribute a Solaris desktop system to the public in the form of Open Solaris. The project has so far spawned Shillix and Belenix systems, which are almost indistinguishable from a Linux distro, and it's latest effort, Project Indiana, is a new version being head by nome other than the amazing Ian Murdock, father of Debian Linux.

Honorable mention: OS/2 Warp

Ah, ha, ha, ha! Are you telling me people actually love this system enough to want it back? Yes, we are, and quit mocking it. OS/2 Warp got a lot of things right before Microsoft thought of them, and without Microsoft you would be using an IBM OS/2 version today. OS/2 mainly had the simplicity of a DOS-like operating system combined with some of the work-friendly power of a Unix station. They also had an interface that was very consistent, if a little clunky.

Who's making it free for the people today? Nobody. And since IBM and Microsoft still own joint rights to this aborted fetus of a system and they are currently deadly enemies, don't expect it to be public domain any time soon.

Filed Under: News in Technology • Product Reviews