history of computer interfaces

[miriam_e]

I've been reading a smallish book by Neal Stephenson called "In the Beginning was the Command Line". It is an extremely interesting analysis of why operating systems are like they are. For me it is useful because I want to try and build a small, low-energy computer this year, and I have been puzzling over what to use as its operating system.

• Microsoft's Windows is utterly out of the question, even if it wasn't so bloated, clumsy, and inefficient.
  
• MacOS only works on proprietary hardware.
  
• Linux has a lot of annoying points, even though Puppy Linux is relatively small and fast.
  
• BSD Unix has some of Linux's sore points, though I must give it a proper test run sometime soon.
  
• BeOS might not even be available anymore.
  
• AmigaDOS is really made for specialised hardware, and the emulators slow it down or are buggy.
  
• Some of the older OSes are faster, smaller, and in many ways better, but miss out on some of the more recent developments of modern systems, and don't have a lot of the useful software (GIMP, Audacity, flash disk drivers, internet connectivity, etc).