Most of the world is powered by Unix (and its clones/derivatives), at least in the infrastructure space, with a small percent still running Windows Server for some masochistic reason. Outside of playing with OpenVMS exactly one time with qemu (purely because I kind of liked their goofy shark logo [1]), I've never used anything from DEC, but throughout the 80s my understanding is that DEC was a force to be reckoned with. I think there was probably more diversity in operating systems back then.
The DEC stuff was huge for a period of time, and I feel like there's an alternate universe where VMS and VAX stayed the standard, and Unix is the footnote. I'm not sure that universe would be better, there's probably a reason that Unix won overall, but it's not like DEC and VAX were tiny things.
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Dec-vms-...
Sort of like if Plan 9 had succeeded Unix.
I hate Windows but that's not so much the kernel but much more due to my hatred of the interface and Windows Update, so I don't know if the alternate universe where DEC reigned supreme would be better or worse.
UNIX probably won out due to licensing and the fact that it was available on x86-64 so much earlier - mainly Linux and BSD I guess but Solaris was there as well, VMS didn't boot on x86-64 until 2019.
Well, Unix came into being on a DEC PDP-11, and C is basically high-level PDP-11 assembly...
And MS-DOS was influenced by CP/M which was influenced by DEC operating systems (like OS/8 for the PDP-8).
Their cases were far more white than beige, and generally fairly understated and subtle. (Although sometimes that backfired, because it was hard finding white peripherals - https://antnik.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/dec_... )
I owned the Digital Celebris in both a desktop and a mini tower configuration.
intrasight•2mo ago