Which third party (i.e., non-Windows, non-Linux) OS is your favorite?

P.S. Why are phpBB polls limited to so few choices?? Argh!

i am biased , but i did make it because i could not find a OS to sute my needs .
Eg: a 32bit, pmode, Dos Extreme, that was like dos, but could use upto 4GB of memory .

I think you shouldn't have included DOS, BSD, OS/2 as they're all "Large" systems, at least compared to the homebrewn. My vote goes for ReactOS... they get real work done, and ReactOS + tinykrnl could become useful sometime.

If it's FreeDOS, then it would suit the list just the same as ReactOS.

but DOS is Microsoft like Windows - I wouldn't call it "3rd-party" :S

Then it would have to be called MS-DOS here. And what about PC-DOS, DR-DOS, etc.?

Good point - I guess most people tend to think "MS-DOS" when no other specifier is given, though. I know I do (oh, and lots of the people that actually know DOS only know about MS-* - I guess the situation is a bit better here, though .)

I voted for DOS (FreeDOS namely) but OS/2 was very impressive. Don't quote me but I think the real<->pmode switches caused some instability.

Well, I originally had a lot more choices, but it makes you restrict it to only 10, so I chose to include less obscure systems (so no CP/M, SkyOS, Syllable, AmigaOS, RISC OS, TOS, Contiki, VMS, Solaris, Symbian, Palm, etc.) excepting the local favorites, of course.

It was a choice between DEX4U and MENUET i choose DEX4U as i found it easier to program on

reactOS (i choose other)
i like it

Its like football there is 1rst division 2nd division and the ones who play for fun.
At this moment it seems that OCTAOS is more popular than OS/2 and BSD incredible.

I know my vote was biased, but I'm on the Dex4u team because I didn't like what was out there, so I believve the vote was just. Without Dex4u, I'd be split between Menuet (which is oddly difficult to program on) and DOS, (which is 16 bit)

I too am biased... I'm with the Dex4u team...

I may have considered voting for menuetos, but ever since 64bit and Kolibri came around I've had problems keeping up.

What do you mean "keep up" - are they developing too fast for you? Well, lets just hope that this thing won't happen to other open-source OSs out there :S

I don't want to cause anything bad here. But reasons why I can't keep up:
1) The 'main' developer last year (or before) kept switching, 1 wasn't heard from.
2) 64bit came + Kolibri. I did like Kolibri BTW...
3) M32 from Ville was 'dumped'.
4) There were fights (or something).

When M32 was nolonger being worked on, I lost interest in MenuetOS completly.

Also I think I may be able to learn ASM better with Dex4u...

I like SkyOS. Even though I've never tried it (there's not way I'm paying for Beta software), it looks very good.

I've been playing with DOS-Minix 2.0.4 a little bit recently, seems quite nifty. Also, OctaOS 0.198 (beta??) seems very, very promising (thanks to FASM and ZLIB). Of course, Menuet32 (e.g., 0.79pre) is also a very nice OS. And yes, (Free-)DOS is cool, too (I use ODIN 0.72): DOS is my favorite.

I must admit ignorance of others since I'm not so motivated or courageous to try/learn every OS out there. (I think my attempt at booting a SolarOS floppy didn't work, but that was a while ago).

P.S. FreeDOS 1.0 is out (ISOs only for now, floppies will be released soon).