"Maybe they would suck less than unix if they had seen in the last 20 years a fraction of the development behind unix operating systems."

Essentially it. Each on my list were innovative in their capabilities with some capabilities still missing from UNIX. They just didn't have economic and social momentum behind them. Far as FreeDOS, I left it off because it wasn't really innovative or worth copying. I'd take UNIX or Oberon over DOS any day. Maybe eCOS given its innovation was being highly and easily configurable.

http://ecos.sourceware.org/about.html

nickpsecurity, I missed the link in your reply. Now I think you were listing only operating systems that sucked less than unix ("did vastly better than UNIX in all kinds of ways"). And I have just realized you are not the one claiming that most "most non-unix oses simply suck, too, and usually more."

Exactly. You got me mixed up with someone else. Now, one could easily argue they sucked in some way. Especially in interfaces for some (eg mainframes, minicomputers) given they were created before PC's were invented or computers could even do much more than batch or terminal ops. Then, due to backward compatibility, they had to maintain these warts. One might also talk supported features, speed, cost, and so on for anything on the list. LISP machines got too slow, OpenVMS was too expensive, BeOS lacked Windows ecosystem, and so on.

Yet, each contributed architectural or feature innovations that are worth considering or copying to this day. Some you still can't buy on the market: Burrough's hardware security or Genera LISP's development capabilities. Some FOSS hasn't quite caught up to: BeOS's amazing, consistent, desktop experience; OpenVMS's bulletproof clustering and other availability features [1]; OS/app security of KeyKOS or EROS; low 0-days in kernel code due to use of high-level language with extra type or memory safety. So, they still kick UNIX and Windows ass in numerous attributes. Ironically, it's Microsoft and Windows trying to copy as many techniques as possible from old systems rather than UNIX. Their quality and security levels have skyrocketed vs Dark Ages of Microsoft. UNIX (or alternatives) have plenty room to grow by using differentiators like on my list.

Note: I especially encourage you to carefully read the Genera LISP machine page. Some points are obviously old news or even laughable today ("has TCP/IP"). 8-13 for debugging down to OS level and 16 are a pretty badass combo you ain't getting with UNIX, C, and GCC. ;)

[1] Maybe Amazon Web Services would've gone down less if they, instead of UNIX, were running on VMS boxes known for individual uptime of 3-5 years and cluster uptime of up to 17 years in hands of average sysadmins. Ya think? :)

Besides adopting ideas from the mainframe world in UNIX System V architecture, what improvements has UNIX had in those 20 years in what concerns modern computing architecture?

I don't know what fraction of the improvements concern modern computing architecture, but probably we all agree that there have been improvements that make it suck less in practice. I thought I was replying to the person who said that "most non-unix oses simply suck, too, and usually more." My point is that the comparison is somewhat unfair.

If by UNIX you mean *BSD or GNU/Linux derivatives then I agree the UNIX-like experience, as such has improved a lot, when comparing the BSD/GNU experience with the POSIX certified one.

However, I imagine that if I seat myself in front of a 2016's fresh installation of Aix, HP-UX, Solaris, Tru64... I will struggle to find any major difference from a 2006 installation, the last time I used any of them.

DTrace, ZFS, and containers should be major differences. Serious changes in how admins' jobs work have resulted from just those three. A whole cloud platform has been built when that was added to other benefit of open-sourcing one. So, Sun's OS got transformed into a pseudo-mainframe with better debugging and possibly better filesystem. I don't recall enough details of mainframe FS's to be sure on latter.

Far as Linux, Ubuntu with its software-center, Flash, VLC, and so on are much different than my early experience with Caldera OpenLinux on a Pentium 2. Which would've looked like shit with almost no apps or features had it not bricked that machine during install. ;)

So, they're not very innovative but have had huge improvements that totally change the user-experience. I mean, certain things are similar or the same especially on terminal end. Yet, we can't pretend like UNIX has sat still. It's just still not fixing its worst issues or learning from prior work as effectively as it could.

Yeah, but that is just copying the other OSes, mostly mainframe features that are just relevant for a few selected souls.

As for the desktop, yeah the experience has improved, but still no proper GUI stack in place, all is built on top of X architecture.

Nothing compared to the work done at Xerox, DEC/Olivetti or even what Microsoft does at MSR.

I came to me thinking how similar the coding experience in Mac OS X, Android and Windows or the whole OS stack is to the way I experienced Oberon back in the day.

Yes Mac based OSes and Android have a UNIX kernel, but when using the official APIs for applications, one would hardly notice it.

That was the brilliance of NEXT: leverage momentum of UNIX in lower layers while hiding it behind a sensible upper layer. Fixed up the graphics stack, attempted to provide better organization (failure = Mach), and provided consistent, good user interface on top. Maybe better API's, maybe not... never programmed Macs.

I've been saying for a while that a group needs to do this for one of the BSD's. Not just put KDE or Gnome on one but seriously reengineer the GUI, sounds, graphics, admin controls, and package mgmt. Smooth integration with high usability and good efficiency like Macs. Closest I've seen was Mint but had to ditch it for security reasons.

Yeah, I was a big Mandrake and SuSE (up to 6.3) fan back in the day.

I agree, but the pace of development of those systems over the last ten years is not comparable with the previous ten years. By that time unix sucked already substantially less. For example, SunOS 5.6, 5.7, 5.8, 5.9 and 5.10 were all released in the 1997-2005 timeframe. Only 5.11 has been released since then.