Repost: OS Experience Dump

Originally posted April 11, 2007, now archived here.

For further explanation why this post exists, see Intro to Experience Dump. This is the operating systems (OS) and environments section, which will be shorter and include less extended commentary that the hardware section. In no particular order, the list as best I can remember…

Every version of Windows from 3.0 on, and NT from 3.51 on.
At least four Linux versions: Red Hat, Mandrake, Corel and Ubuntu.
OS/2 Warp 3.0
Macintosh circa early nineties
Most versions of MS-DOS, particularly 3.3, 5.0 and 6.x
OS-9 for TRS-80
AS/400
Tranti Systems EZ-DOS
An older version of Novell

This is includes things I have supported as well as touched, so it is possible for me to have supported the use of, consequences or. or interactions with an OS without having used it personally.

Some things I experienced more intensively than others. When I started working at Corporate Software, I was nicknamed “The DOS Guy” by my colleagues. Even then, before Windows 95 released, when we were using Windows 3.11, there were people hired to do support who were utterly lost in anything but the Windows GUI. And not always much better off there.

By comparison, I used to load ansi.sys and create colorful batch file menus using escape codes. The first time I ever saw Windows, I thought it was a bit goofy and wasn’t sure I saw the point. What got me using it was the apps it would run.

I used to hang out on a BBS run by an OS/2 fanatic. I even read the Team OS/2 newsgroup (or it may have been a Fidonet thing) regularly with great interest, despite having never used it. When OS/2 Warp 3.0 hit, I bought it and used it for a while. It was pretty cool. IBM missed a slight window of opportunity to shake up the industry. I found it started crashing after a while, which I blamed more on the hardware I installed it onto than on OS/2. I put it on a 386. When I got Windows 95, it went on a 486. Surprise! It seemed more stable. It also helped that I got Microsoft apps support training on Windows 95 just before it was released. I never looked back, but always felt bad that OS/2 didn’t fare better. It could have, to the degree it was a matter of business decisions.

The OS category properly gets into server elements, but I should probably cover that separately. Take something like Windows 2003 Server SBE; you’re setting up a server and dealing with its OS, but also Exchange at the same time. Then again, this reminded me I forgot the Novell server I dealt with, and while that’s networking, it’s also the OS running the computer, so I added it.

Okay, next it’ll be word processors and combined packages that featured a word processor.

Experience Posts (links to reposts):

Intro to Experience Dump
Hardware Experience
OS Experience
Word Processing Experience
Spreadsheets and Accounting
Graphics and Presentations
Database and RDBMS
Dictation Software
Communications, Internet, PDA, Blogging
Legal Industry Software
Backup and Compression Software
Miscellaneous Software
Security, Spam, Malware…
Call Center and Tech Support Tools
Languages and Programming Tools
Server Software
Software Creation

Employment and College
Experiences and Accomplishments Scratchpad