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by bogomipz 2643 days ago
Wow that's an interesting list. Might you be able to add some specific points of interest on some of these OS's to start with? Cheers.
1 comments

Sure,

Burroughs B5500, first OS written in an high level systems language (ESPOL, later NEWP) in 1961, 8 years before C came into existence. Already used compiler instrics instead of Assembly, and the concept of unsafe code blocks.

IBM OS/360, famously introduced the concept of containers, alongside IBM OS/400, also has language environments, think common VM for multiple languages.

IBM OS/400, originally written in a mix of Assembly and PL/S, uses the concept of managed runtime with a kernel JIT called at installation time, and uses a database as filesystem.

Mesa/Cedar, system language developed at Xerox PARC, using the same IDE like experience similar to their Smalltalk and Interlisp-D workstations. Uses reference counting with a cycle collector.

Oberon and its descendants, Niklaus Wirth and his team approach to systems programming at ETHZ, after his 2nd sabaticall year at Xerox PARC.

Mac OS/Lisa, these first versions of Apple OSes were written in Object Pascal, designed in collaboration with Niklaus Wirth, whose extensions were later adopted by Borland for Turbo Pascal 5.5.

Singularity/Midori, the research OSes designed at MSR, largely based on .NET technologies.

Inferno, the actual end of Plan 9, using a managed language for userspace, Limbo.

SPIN OS/Topaz OS - Graphical workstation OSes for distributed computing developed in Modula-3

Thanks this is great! I'm looking forward to digging into the specifics of some these. Cheers.