Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 15 years and 1 month old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

On one of the forums I frequent there’s been a recent thread about the evolution of the graphical user interface. In that discussion someone posted this link to a GUI timeline that shows screenshots of many of the UIs that evolved over the years. It’s a really cool walk through GUI history and made me recall (some fondly and some not so much) the operating systems behind those GUIs that I’ve used over my 25+ years of computing.

• My Atari 800XL didn’t have a GUI at all, just a “friendly” text-based blue screen (not the bad kind that every Windows user is now familiar with).
• I remember using an Apple Macintosh with System 6 at work and actually doing the upgrade to System 7 when it was released.
• I also recall using a college friend’s IBM PC that could run Microsoft Windows/386.
• The PCs in the computer lab at the university were all still DOS-based, but there was a “Windows” lab where you could use Windows 3.0 (and eventually 3.1).
• I remember the “fun” my roommates and I had setting up a token-ring network in our apartment with Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (we had these thick cables running across and down the halls between our bedrooms and family room where all the computers were located … isn’t wireless networking fantastic?).
• Really pushing my 386 to the limit, I would use Desqview (the text-based version) to run my Renegade-based BBS in the background and still be able to use the PC for other tasks even while someone was dialed into the system.
• For a while I also ran OS/2 Warp on my 386 but then switched to Windows 95 when it was finally released.
• For a time between Windows 95 and Windows 2000, I ran NT 4.0 as my main OS (not a good decision for gaming!) to avoid Windows 98 and ME.
• I’ve run many of the various Linux distros like Red Hat, Mandrake/Mandriva, and Ubuntu (though never as my main OS, just on a “server” of some sort or in a dual-boot configuration).
• And of course I’ve also gone through Windows 2000 to XP to Vista (and am now testing Windows 7 at work).

Whew.