Talk:Comparison of operating systems/Archive 3

message: What does "Network Appliance" mean in the "Target system type" and how it's different from embedded? maybe linking the various terms might be a good idea too so people can understand the implied meaning?
:When the vendors talk about a network appliance, it usually refers to a system that performs some relatively-dedicated function (but isn't "embedded" within a larger piece of equipment). The function might be web serving, file serving, a database engine, a DNS server, etc., but it's usually pretty well-constrained as compared to a general-purpose PC (connected to a human) or "server" (that may be doing *MANY* back-end tasks). --Atlant 15:20, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Network Appliance 

message: Maybe we should clarify what we mean by predecessor. Is it necessary for the later to OS to be actually based on the code of the former, or is it enough if it shares a lot of concepts? For example I'd consider Unix to be a predecessor of Linux, even though the relevent field has recently been changed to "None". --K. Sperling (talk) 02:44, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Linux is the name of just the kernel. Your picture gets clearer when you know that the operating system is a GNU variant using Linux. And GNU's Not Unix. -- mms 01:45, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Predecessor 

message: Should BSD and POSIX be listed as primary APIs, given that a lot of free software written to those APIs runs on OS X (and that much of the non-GUI parts of Carbon and Cocoa, such as the file system and networking APIs, are built atop the BSD/POSIX APIs)? Or should they be listed in a footnote or a parenthetical note, given that most commercial apps for OS X are written with Carbon or Cocoa? Guy Harris 00:47, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would think they'd be considered first-class APIs just like Carbon and Cocoa. I mean, there's plenty of stuff on there that uses the BSD layer -- the entire command line userland comes from FreeBSD, for example, and X windows is getting to be pretty important as well. And I believe Firefox, to take one specific example, has an Aqua front end and a Unix backend. (Don't forget, not all important software is commercial anyway; I do believe there's a good amount of GUI stuff in Fink that requires X.) Haikupoet 01:28, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As a member of of the core team for Ethereal (which might well be as much used as any of the commercial network analyzers on OS X; it's the only one I use on OS X), I'm quite aware that not all important OS X software is commercial. :-) I think they should be listed as primary APIs, but I figured the only reason they weren't is that somebody figured they weren't as important, so I wanted to give them the chance to defend not marking them as primary APIs if they'd explicitly decided not to do so. Unless somebody can convincingly defend not listing them as primary, I'd list them as primary. Guy Harris 01:36, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done and done, because I entirely agree with you. I think part of the problem is that there's a metric assload of people who really don't have a full grasp of what the Mac platform is all about (with today's news about the new Intel iMacs and the horribly named MacBook all the Mac ignorance is crawling out of the woodwork on the chat sites). Haikupoet 01:44, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  OS X and BSD/POSIX as APIs 

message: With X11 listed as one of the primary APIs for OS X, should it also be listed for the other UN*Xes, which also have an optional X11 - or which might install with X11 standard in desktop configurations, as they, unlike OS X, have only an X11-based GUI? Guy Harris 01:53, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have no objection myself, though it occurs to me it should be listed as "optional" on the Linux entry. Haikupoet 02:13, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: On what UN*Xes would it not be optional? You can also install the BSDs without X11, I think; I don't know about Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, etc., and I forget whether I had to install X11 separately with Tiger on my PowerBook. Guy Harris 03:34, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A fair point. Hey, I can be wrong about things :-) In any case, virtually all Unix GUI software requires X except for the odd embedded system. Haikupoet 04:04, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd in fact remove it from the OS X row, since it's not exactly a primary API of OS X, or any other OS where an X server is an optional component. --K. Sperling (talk) 07:53, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  X11 as a primary API? 

message: Vita Nuova made Inferno - Bell Labs made plan 9, Inferno is derived from plan 9. Much like HP-UX is derived from Unix SysV, that does not make AT&T the creator of HP-UX. For this reason I have put Vita Nuova back as the creator of Inferno. Janizary 04:42, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, that is not correct. Vita Nuova obtained the rights to Inferno from Bell Labs. Bell Labs originally created Inferno. Some evidence: a paper on the design of Inferno's VM by Winterbottom and Pike from Bell Labs, a press release from Lucent stating that "The Inferno software was developed by researchers Rob Pike, Phil Winterbottom and Sean Dorward of the Bell Labs Computing Sciences Research Center". You may also want to use the Wayback Machine on http://inferno.bell-labs.com . Dysprosia 06:31, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  See also The design of the Inferno virtual machine, by Phil Winterbottom and Rob Pike; they're listed as being at "Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies", with Bell Labs e-mail addresses. Guy Harris 07:38, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  That's the paper I quote above ;) Dysprosia 07:42, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yeah, you can go ahead and fix that then. Janizary 03:16, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Done. Guy Harris 03:27, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inferno 

message: This article has no mention of Minix. --Starnessonny 06:09, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  No info about Minix 

message: There is no mention of eComStation (eCS), the successor to OS/2, in this list. OS/2 development ceased some time ago, as is mentioned in the chart, but eComStation development continues today. I would be glad to add it but I'm fairly new to editing on Wikipedia so I'll hold off so someone who won't likely mess things up can do it right. Thanks! -Mo 06:29, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  No info about eComStation 

message: Does this table include only multi-task OSes? How about DOS, RT-11 etc? How about other old OSes?--Dojarca 16:50, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The article says nothing that would restrict it to OSes that support multitasking.  Nothing, however, obliges anybody to add any particular OS to the table, so do it yourself. Guy Harris (talk) 21:28, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: DOSs are in the DOS specific comparison table.  My edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comparison_of_operating_systems&diff=655980309&oldid=655924582--Nodove (talk) 15:18, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  DOS 

message: I'm a linux/win/os x/beos user, but think DragonFlyBSD has sufficiently different goals and principles from FreeBSD to warrant its own entry here.  212.3.160.65 12:20, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ubuntu is based on the debian way and is often linux.2A02:8422:1191:6E00:56E6:FCFF:FEDB:2BBA (talk) 22:11, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

text: It's part Windows (NT family), which is a category of the tables.72.56.121.36 (talk) 19:40, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Which OSes can be included here? 

message: The target system types column is seems a little dodgy to me, certainly unreferenced and possibly OR. It should be removed, or cites should be found and added (which may be difficult). Any comments? NicM 15:44, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No comments during the time that many other Talk sections got comments—no comments in 7 years.Nodove (talk) 21:30, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Target system types 

message: The size of the Linux kernel cannot be compared to the size of Windows and Mac OSX because the latter two are complete operating systems with plenty of bloat, not just a kernel. For this reason I have added the size of Debian GNU/Linux as well as the kernel to make it more comparable. However, Debian is one of the largest distributions out there and I doubt that anyone uses every single package in Debian. It would be better to find a source for number of lines in a popular out-of-the-box distribution such as Ubuntu. -- Borb (talk) 15:07, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Size of Linux 

message: Symbian is an extremely popular operating system, with an approximately 45% share of the market. This is more than three times the Windows market share, making it THE most popular operating system in the market. Why is the most popular operating system of today's market not included in a Comparison of Operating systems? This seems like a major oversight. 125.236.211.165 (talk) 03:44, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  No info about Symbian 

message: Since DragonflyBSD started life as a fork of FreeBSD 4.8 (as stated in the Dragonfly Wikipedia article's very first sentence), I have changed its predessor accordingly. NevarMaor (talk) 00:26, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not familiar with any of these OSes, or their histories but (as you state) it seems to make more sense, based on the DragonflyBSD article. -- Trevj (talk) 18:45, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  DragonflyBSD 

message: BeOS is not included?! Wikipedians must live in their own reality! Happy hyper-fishbowl to you all!  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.111.33.117 (talk) 15:43, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: In case anybody is wondering about this antagonistic comment, such seems to have been the case because BeOS is not currently available. I assume that the above IP will never be back, but in case s/he ever does see this: learn to assume good faith on Wikipedia. Learn to ask your questions in a less confrontational manner. And maybe read the article header next time.--Moralis (talk) 23:21, 5 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Haiku the clone of BeOS and ZETA the illegal copy of BeOS

message: VxWorks is used very often, and is still very active, when you are looking at real-time systems. Should we not add this in also?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.151.103 (talk) 14:05, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should we not add in VxWorks 

message: I know that former versions of the consumer Windows operating system were ported to IA-64 (Itanium). However, that support was removed in Windows Vista. Since this article seems to deal with the most recent releases of operating systems, should that processor be removed from the list? (The most recent release of the Sevrer edition still has Itanium support, so the Windows Server entry wouldn't need to be changed.) 24.222.2.222 16:36, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, makes sense. be bold and go ahead, and explain it in the edit summary. -- intgr 20:28, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Windows IA-64 Support 

message: In Windows' Talk, VMS was mentioned as - principally - being a precursor (to Windows). There are already pages to OpenVMS and FreeVMS but I don't know enough of the subject to add it cojently... MonstaPro 23:24, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inclusion of VMS 

message: There seems to be lots of conflicting information for the Microsoft Windows row... How much distinction are we making? Firewall gets an "XP or later" tag and an "NT-Based systems" tag, but wouldn't those make sense to be cut being as you combined the rows? Also, security vulnerabilities points to an XP page, but pricing discusses Vista. I feel it should be either all Vista or add more lines for the different versions - presumably the reason for keeping XP around is how many people are running it, but isn't this meant to be a technical article? I changed the firewall and security link, but I don't know what else may need to be changed. EB0und 18:58, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vista? XP? Pre-XP? 

message: It seems, after installing and using basically every MS operating system since Windows 3.1, that Windows 2000 is the only MS operating system in which user rights can be flexibly defined, just as on any Linux system. I.e.: administrators can define for ALL directories on a machine which users have reading, writing and executing rights. This has been made much more "fool proof" (or "illiterate user resistant") since XP, but this has been achieved by eliminating all flexibility to give users for instance "read only" user rights for other users document root subdirectories. To me it is unclear why MS didn`t include comparable functionality at least in the "Pro" versions of XP and Vista. Thus keeping W2k still the only viable option for shared workstations...  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.7.77.249 (talk) 06:08, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  What about user rights management 

message: The article represents linux as a whole os but the listed vulnerabilities are only about the kernel. That's unfair for the other OSes. I would suggest that there are no vulnerabilities listed for linux and a link to an explanation why to be added, or get rid of the whole vulnerabilities column anyway cause it's useless. It is not feasible to count vulnerabilities for what is called GNU/linux cause there is no standard distribution. Well done. 79.103.201.139 (talk) 22:16, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Linux vulnerabilities 

message: Most of the links have a different number than listed in the article. Aside from the fact that comparison of the numbers is meaningless for systems that have different security research focus, outdated information are even worse. I know that this was discussed before, but this columns should be removed altogether, already for the reason that they do not get updated regularly. (Even of the popular ones, none was correct. Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux are still wrong. I fixed FreeBSD by changing it to "unknown".) 85.177.247.122 (talk) 14:49, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Known unpatched vulnerabilities out of date 

message: As noted, most of them are out of date.
Most of them are closer to the number of Secunia "Advisories" than they are to the number of Secunia "Vulnerabilities" - for instance Linux says "13" whereas in Secunia we see "10" "advisories" and a far greater number of "vulnerabilities"... The information in Wikipedia absolutely does not correspond to the information given by the source.
As noted, the Linux data is only accurate for the Kernel - and only for one specific kernel version - not everyone is using it; remember that usually you need to turn the system off (only) to update the kernel (or its drivers) and many Linux machines will be up and running for far more than the lifespan of a kernel version. They will suffer from different vulnerabilities. I imagine that it's the same for, say, BSD boxes. Are we talking about Operating systems people can start using now, or what they're already using?
Linux (and BSD etc) distribution vendors may patch their kernel versions, blocking vulnerabilities at different rates than what Linus Torvalds does. Hence their binaries may have more or less vulnerabilities than what the vanilla kernel source does.
As noted, the Linux count is only against the kernel. This seems unfair as the counts for Windows (for example) may be against removable components (such as services that must be switched off to enhance security or registry settings that must be tweaked)
So basically:
The counts are not current and do not reflect the state of real systems
The counts do not reflect information from the reference!
The counts are not measured or gathered consistently; they measure different kinds of information
I will (try to) remove them for the time being. If I'm making a mistake then I apologize, in that case please revert and update.
125.236.211.165 (talk) 03:22, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Known unpatched vulnerabilities should be removed 

message: OS/2 is proprietary so you are not allowed to sell copies of it. Most likely you don't even have the source an therefore the ability really copy it or to maintain it. The fact that you can download most free software at no additional costs doesn't mean, free software is gratis per definition. It can be sold at any price. Otherwise it would be proprietary. So  is just plainly false in this regard. It can only fit to proprietary products where the proprietator has set this price (zero). --mms 14:22, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't understand your point. I don't see that the article equates free software with zero-cost anywhere, or asserts that one implies the other, it simply lists the official price(s) of the software from the publisher/main supplier. The  and non-free coloring was unnecessary and POV. There are many different prices and sometimes the same product has different prices for different versions (some even have free limited editions, or are free for students, or other variations): why should zero-cost be singled out among these? NicM 13:47, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is no official price for published free software. Even if there is one creator, he cannot establish the »official« selling price after he sold (or gave away) the first copy. After there is one licensee, there can only be selling prices but no official price. The coloring of the boxes can't be a POV ─ it helped to get an overview. I suggest to step back to the templates and use  for free software and  for freeware. Even if I must deflect opposition in this regard I insist that one can't impute free software to cost zero. We can write »any« or similar expressions or we can leave this field empty for free software as this category doesn't fit to it. And BWT, if you want one example of an »official« price for free software which isn't zero, take a look at the online store of the Free Software Foundation. --mms 14:21, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You are missing the point. Free software can be sold for any price or for multiple prices from different suppliers, but so can anything - Windows has different prices in different countries, and copies on ebay often go at prices different again. However, each of the operating systems listed, free software or otherwise, have a single primary publisher, and it is their official price which is listed. The exception to this is Linux, and it already points to a separate article covering the many distro publishers. NicM 15:26, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Non-free software can't be resold. Almost ever you don't even have the source code. So you haven't really ownership in the first place. I think what you mean is to just resell your single binary copy. This isn't distribution at all and especially not commercial distribution. --mms 16:03, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That is not true, there are many people reselling commercial software, they are called resellers. Source code has absolutely nothing to do with it. NicM 18:24, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

text: In other words, just because I can take FreeBSD and resell it at $200, doesn't mean we should list its price as $200, or that the price column is meaningless. I could equally well come to an arrangement with Microsoft to sell Windows at $900 (and OEMs do come to agreements to sell Windows at lower prices with hardware). The official publishers are obvious - the FreeBSD project and Microsoft - and it is their direct prices that we list, not mine, not yours, not Dell's or anyone else's. You could make an argument for removing the price column entirely, but not for treating free software specially. NicM 15:31, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: FreeBSD is free software so the price could be any amount. The situation with FreeBSD may look more concise than with GNU/Linux but there are forks of FreeBSD, too. It is perfectly legal to sell thousands or millions of copies of FreeBSD at any price the market allows you. Your version wouldn't be less official than the one of the FreeBSD Project. It would be the same software with the same licence. This separates free software from proprietary software. --mms 16:03, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You are still missing the point. It is legal to resell FreeBSD at any price, but it can also be legal to resell any software—free software is not special in this regard, if I reach agreement with Microsoft I can resell Windows at a higher or lower price. The point is that you are a reseller, you are not the primary publisher of FreeBSD. If two organisations did produce versions of FreeBSD, both with significant use and both called FreeBSD with different prices, then we would have to note that or list them seperately (like we do with Linux), but that is not the case. NicM 18:24, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: To state it more clearly, if someone did decide to publish their own version of FreeBSD for $100 a pop, it would be a different FreeBSD and would either require it's own line in the table or be listed on a separate page (like Linux). Because the license means that someone can do this, does not make the FreeBSD Project's FreeBSD has "any" price, it means that when someone does, we need to list them if they are significant enough to appear. Note that PCBSD has its own line, and OpenBSD is separate from NetBSD. NicM 18:39, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

text: The important thing is the distinction between reselling and republishing (ie, publishing a customized version). Reselling is irrelevant for this. With republishing, my point is that just because free software allows publishing customized versions at any price, does not automatically mean that the price is any. The table refers specifically to FreeBSD as published by the FreeBSD project, it doesn't mean FreeBSD published by anybody at all. If anyone else published a customized version, that would be a different table entry. Do you see my point? NicM 18:50, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

text: Also note that free software is not special in this regard, other than that it makes forks easy. Just because in theory I could sign an agreement with Microsoft to take their source base and build NicM's Windows and sell it for $9000, it doesn't mean Windows has "any" price, it means that Microsoft Windows has Microsoft's price, and NicM's Windows has my price. Once I stop being a reseller and become a republisher, then a new line in the table is needed. NicM 18:58, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

text: Oh, and the colouring of boxes can be and was POV. Why are we only highlighting an overview of free/non-free? Lumping all the varying non-free costs together is POV - it isn't as simple as a non-free/free split, and why should free get special treatment? NicM 15:37, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The different values of the costs can be grouped to zero, non-zero and any. The question whether it is free or proprietary software is a totally different and is answered in Preferred license. A color scheme would be helpfull for this column. Especially the entry of Mac OS X (Server) is misleading as it is now. --mms 16:03, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No, "any" is not appropriate here, all of them can have any price. As I have already explained, lumping the dozens of prices and variations under "non-free" and highlighting "free" is POV and unnecessary. NicM 18:24, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, Linux can be sold for a price and some vendors do (Red Hat?)... Who is the primary vendor of Linux? Is Linux free? Is Torvalds the primary vendor? Is it Stallman? Or is it Red Hat, or even Shuttleworth? Not to mention licensing. The kernel may be under GPL, but what happens when we load a proprietary ATI driver into it? Furthermore, back to cost, what currency are we talking about here? Many of these things are listed on local sites as costing twice what we've specified in the article! I'm just putting some extra stuff on the table. I guess: What is the "Cost/Availability" column? A lot of these have specific dollar-amounts listed but there's no link to any pricing page telling us any of the prices - this makes it very hard to confirm and very hard to contest the accuracy of pricing in Wikipedia's list.
I propose: throw away the "Cost" part and keep the "Availability" part. If it's available from the vendor for a fee then mention that it is available "For a fee", do not mention how much that fee actually is. GPL software is always free, regardless of the primary vendor's charge (because the purchaser is permitted by the license to redistribute it) - is that not correct? 125.236.211.165 (talk) 03:39, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Costs of purchase of free software 

message: The fact that footnote numbers are repeated within this page (e.g. there are three footnote #8s) causes many of the links to go wonky. I may fix this when I have more time, otherwise someone else can.
EvanED (talk) 21:28, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Footnotes 

message: In the security table, a division should be added called "user permission restrictions".
This vital part is entirely not described; perhaps that part of the section: Operating_system#Security can be moved to this article. According to this site, windows versions even completely lack it, meaning that any user can wite or overwrite almost anything ont the computer and install software. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.182.180.99 (talk) 15:23, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Security

message: The article is focused too much on personal computers. For example, the diagram only shows a comparison for these machines. The story is different for servers, ... Also, any computing device can have a OS installed, including eg a playstation 3, robot, ... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.182.180.99 (talk) 15:23, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Focus on personal computers

message: Derp. An operating system costs $100. That's nice. What currency? I don't mind it being in US dollars, I mean it's hard to justify why it should be in any particular currency, but US dollars seems to be the most universal.... But nevertheless, it needs to be stated. Either every entry should say $100 USD or the column should be called "Cost (in USD)/Availability"
122.107.187.43 (talk) 11:23, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Currency 

message: This page lists both the NT native API and Win32 as 'native' APIs of Windows NT, where in reality Win32 is implemented as a subsystem. References to this are numerous throughout the internet but here is an example.
:--Mappy wp (talk) 02:20, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Windows NT Native API 

message: Many people coming to the page are only interested in comparing current OS to decide which to use. However, because all of the comparison tables are multiple screens long and compare every OS that has existed, they find the page to be mostly useless. We need a way to show only current information for those who want it, in order to increase utility. A method for allowing the viewer to sort information and suppress what they don't need would also be good.
This is a general comment applicable to all comparison articles.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 136.142.206.28 (talk) 22:39, 15 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Modern OS Only Option

message: I couldn't find the string "hurd" in the article, although it is certainly an OS and has an article in the wikipedia.
Maybe to get on this list there has to be a certain number of users?
Son of eugene (talk) 04:41, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  No info about the HURD 

message: Was somebody joking about 130 a month? 30 thousand a month, maybe, and that doesn't include compilers or anything else. Maybe somebody knows actual numbers and will tell us, but nothing IBM sells on the mainframe is 130 a month, certainly not z/OS since it runs on boxes costing a million dollars or more. Even the z/PDT (software alone!) is 25,000 minimum one-time charge. This number should be verified or removed. Cheers Gavin 84.229.131.144 (talk) 18:55, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  z/OS pricing, joke? 

message: while I was wondering if systems calls are faster in microkernel, I didn't find anything.
What about writing the average system call time for each OS (where system calls exist). It may also answer others related questions2A02:8422:1191:6E00:56E6:FCFF:FEDB:2BBA (talk) 20:41, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  time. 

message: iOS has 2 different package managers that are responsible for installing apps and files. Whenever an app is installed (through iTunes, the App Store or other means), the IPA file is sent to installd, the Installer Daemon. On jailbroken iDevices, the package manager is dpkg and, by extension, apt-get. DEBs are installed onto the iDevice through those programs. Either can be interfaced by a terminal application, SSH, or through the GUI frontend Cydia (I don't know if installd can be interfaced directly by the user in such a way). It has been this way since iOS 2 for installd (I think), and since iOS 1 for apt-get/dpkg. Windoze96 (talk) 01:25, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  iOS's package manager(s) 

message: An uninteresting collection of disassociated, unrelated bit and pieces of information comparing apples, to oranges, avocados, aardvarks, orangutans, and Volkswagens.  Useful in what manner? Was somebody bored? These are THE Operating Systems I get to choose from?  Should have been CSD'd a long time ago.  :- ) Don 07:26, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  An interesting list 

message: Firefox OS seems to be missing in the table or does it for any reason not belong onto this site?
Retrovertigo en (talk) 03:30, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Firefox OS missing? 

message: ...Not an operating system. And it doesn't make any sense to say the predecessor of "Linux" is the "Linux Kernel". I'm going to change it to "GNU/Linux" because, while yes I'm aware that much fewer people say that and it's a mouthful, it's the more technical/accurate term. And this is an encyclopedia after all. I'll also change predecessor to "none". For the same reason, I'll also change Android's predecessor to "None" and GNU/Linux's price to "Varies".
Doing this will also help with consistency with Android and ChromeOS. They are Linux-based too, so why should they be in the table while other Linux-based systems aren't? My edit solves this since if we specify that "Linux" is "GNU/Linux" then it makes sense to differentiate between Android/ChromeOS and all the other Linux-based OSes, since the Google ones aren't based on anything from Gnu.
I agree with the guy above me that we should include FirefoxOS as well.
Also, is it totally correct to label ChromeOS as proprietary? Isn't all of the core stuff carried over from ChromiumOS still open source?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.221.142.150 (talk) 00:44, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  I don't want to start a huge debate but...Linux is a kernel... 

message: How does the z/OS nucleus differ from what's described in kernel (operating system)?  As far as I know, it's code running in privileged mode, with user-mode code entering nucleus code through a privilege-changing instruction (SVC or PROGRAM CALL). Guy Harris (talk) 05:40, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  So how is the z/OS nucleus different from a "kernel"? 

message: The "Predecessor" column in the "General information" table seems to be used for several different purposes:
* For AIX, HP-UX, and IRIX, the "Predecessor" is the AT&T UNIX release from which the OS is derived;
* For Android, it's the kernel it uses;
* For various BSDs, it's the BSD from which it forked off;
* For IBM i, it's the name of the OS before it was changed to "IBM i" (i.e., OS/400 isn't an earlier OS, it's an earlier name for the OS)
* For MVS, it's the OS from which it took a lot of its code and APIs, although its immediate predecessor was OS/VS2 (SVS), which was a descendant of OS/360 MVT;
* For OS/390, z/OS, z/VSE, and z/VM, it's again the name of the OS before it was changed;
* For OS/2, it's the OSes from which it took some ideas;
* For Windows NT, it's 1) the OS from which it spun off (NT was originally going to be a New Technology version of OS/2), 2) an OS that came out after the first version of Windows NT but that contributed to NT 4.0 (Windows 95 came out 2 years after Windows NT 3.1), and 3) an OS that I guess represents the roots of classic Windows;
* For ReactOS, it's the OS that it's trying to clone;
* For HP NonStop it's, I guess, what the OS was called before the "OSS personality" was added;
so what exactly is it supposed to be? Guy Harris (talk) 05:17, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is a "Predecessor"? 

message: I'm fairly certain Android is not open source.  I know Google claims they are but that does not make it so.  http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobile-technology/proof-android-not-open-source-and-why-thats-good-169663  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.246.33.19 (talk) 05:42, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Almost all open source software is free (libre/as in freedom) software. Those terms are 2 somewhat different approaches covering almost the same set of software projects, though I would rather advocate to the free software ideology. Read this by Stallman, father of free software, regarding open source. Having said that, the very core of Android is released under the Apache license and that makes it both free/libre and open source; however phone manufacturers usually put proprietary drivers and non-free stuff on top of Android. There are some freer alternatives based on Android, like Cyanogenmod or Replicant. See  for more information. --Isacdaavid (talk) 20:37, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Why is Android listed as open source? 

message: Windows 7 (at least) supports MTP (TC) 09:21, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Windows MTP 

message: Note 8 in the Technical information table is wrong. It says that the Computer architectures supported for PC-BSD, X86, is "only i686 CPU". The article for PC-BSD says it is x86-64, no longer x86. Note 4 in the Security table doesn't make sense.104.178.189.70 (talk) 04:33, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: By "Note 4 in the Security table" do you mean "Support for the in 1997 withdrawn POSIX ACL draft is included in Linux 2.6, but requires a file system able to store them (such as ext3, XFS or ReiserFS)."?  If so, what about it doesn't make sense?  Guy Harris (talk) 17:47, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Note 4 in the Security table doesn't make sense, grammatically. Is it supposed to mean, "Support for the POSIX ACL draft (withdrawn in 1997) is included in Linux 2.6, ..."?  Also, since in the article, the current version of Linux is 4.5, was support for the draft first added in ver. 2.6 or last in ver. 2.6?104.178.189.70 (talk) 17:15, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Note errors 

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replies: text: New URLs have been found for both. Guy Harris (talk) 18:00, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Was thinking that transcluding/including version information from various OS main pages (which are very likely updated more frequently than this page) might be a good way to keep the list more up-to-date. (Obviously, from a data standpoint, it's much easier to have one location to update... also Single source of truth)
Haven't done the research yet to see how best to accomplish this -- but just thought I'd throw it out there.
Jewell D D (talk) 20:33, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Transclusion/Include from OS Pages