Best OS that never crashes [closed]

Question

Is there an OS that never ever ever crashes or halts or does any stupid stuff like Windows does. Meaning never seeing BSODs.

Answer 1

You'll never see a BSOD on Linux or the Mac, but you'll see their equivalent in other colors.

While it's true that Linux and Mac are somewhat more stable than Windows, they can also easily be brought to their knees.

There is no reason for Windows to BSOD, unless you have installed crappy software products or drivers, or any other such bad bad actions. And there is also of course the possibility of faulty hardware, which will kill any OS whatsoever.

Since on whatever other operating system that you choose, you can make equally disastrous actions with similar results, I suggest developing more cautious approach to software installation and system administration, and build yourself an arsenal of products for trouble-shooting software and hardware issues, rather than searching for an unbreakable OS.

As always, in any computer installation, the user is the weakest link.

Answer 2

IBM OS/400

never has crashed, never will.

There are reasons why an OS will crash, mainly driver issues. If you build the hardware for the OS and the OS for the hardware, it eliminates that problem.

People who only have experience with desktop OSes, don't realise how stable mainframes are. It is close to a life-altering experience to work with a completely stable, powerfull, well thought out OS like OS/400. It completely changes your point of view.

There's a reason why mainframe guys are snobs. Their stuff is really that much better. Nothing on the desktop even comes close, though the BSDs are reputed to be quite stable.

But it is the polish and finish of OS/400 that sets it apart from the rest. You have to have several years experience with computers and a good few with UNIX to really appreciate OS/400.

I am a serious, dyed-in-the-wool UNIX fanboi, but I was blown away by the depth of thought that went into OS/400. I would love to get a job using one of those babies.

As a simple example, when OS/400 is first installed, it prints out a neatly formatted report of everything installed and the complete hardware configuration it has been installed on. You take the printout and bind it. No desktop OS even has a facility to do that. You have to download addons to get even close.

It's so ridiculously good that you just keep smiling as you discover more stuff. After a few months, I discovered that not only did it come with Windows type file sharing built in, but it also comes with DLLs to support writing Windows programs to access the internal IBM libraries on the IBM partition.

This plus full manuals plus IBM tech support. It costs an arm and a leg, but it just works. Why would anyone ever put up with anything else?

OS/400 has never been hacked, never had a virus.

Of course, personally I use Slackware at home. I install SME Server for my clients, but it's not OS/400.

Answer 3

I have found that the BIOS to be built into motherboards will only crash in the case of hardware failure. They are the most stable operating system.

Pros:

• Really stable
• Updates are free
• Comes bundled with your computer
• Most allow dynamic underclocking/overclocking
• Expose a lot of hardware at a very basic level
• Crashes indicate a hardware failure

If the BIOS built into your motherboard doesn't fulfill all your functionality (some BIOS' have poor programmability), I have fond memories of the Operating System on my Commodore 64. Rarely had errors except in the case of a bad tape, and on the plus side it boots into a full blown BASIC compiler!

Answer 4

Linux based operating systems are pretty stable, which is why majority of servers hosting sites on the net run it.

There are various flavors / distributions, some I can suggest having a look at are Ubuntu and Linux Mint. For a comprehensive list check out DistroWatch.

For some real-world up-time figures there is this thread, with one machine at 355 days at the time of posting.

Answer 5

Bad drivers or improperly configured drivers are usually the culprit of most crashes on the various O/S's. Once proper drivers are installed and configured, generally, crashing disappears - windows included. This assumes that the hardware is functioning correctly (i.e. no ram errors or disk errors etc.).

Unfortunately for windows, the average user has a lot of power by default (this is starting to change with windows vista and 7). On windows if the user 'catches' some malware it can take over the whole system and really cause a lot of problems. On most other *nix based systems the user doesn't normally run with a lot of power and a similar infection would only affect the users data, nothing more. That would still be bad, but the O/S would be fine.