Obscure operating systems

General Discussions
#1

Like many others, my game sends the current operating system and Java version to a server when you first run it. This is the current distribution of operating systems:


Windows Vista			15
Windows XP			92
Windows 2000			3
Mac OS X			20
Linux				15
Solaris				2

That’s right, there have been people with Solaris using it! Unfortunately they won’t get very far, as my game uses jMonkeyEngine and LWJGL it means that it’ll crash after the menu since no native libraries are available for it. Still, this is the first time ever that I have proof that Solaris actually exists. So now I’m curious if anyone else has seen obscure operating systems like this, this includes everything non Windows/Mac/Linux or maybe also ancient versions like Windows 95 or 98. My question doesn’t really serve any point, only it might be fun to focus on the bottom 0.1% for a change.

As a more serious question, what do you do when you detect such a platform? Do you block it when it’s not in some list of “allowed platforms”, or does it run as normal and you just pray that everything works as it should?

#2

TUER works fine under Solaris but I have less than 3% of users under this OS. Some people tried to use it under Amiga OS… I don’t do anything to prevent it, but maybe you could display a warning.

#3

Realistically, people with OS’s that have been dead for more than 10 years are going to expect programs they download on the Internet not to work. If they don’t, they should.

#4

Of course these people don’t expect too much from compatibility, which is exactly why I find it interesting that some people still use for example Solaris or AmigaOS. I did a quick Google to search the percentage of home users using Solaris, but I couldn’t find any list which even included it :slight_smile:

#5

I just checked, but I’m not seeing Solaris (or anything other exotic) anymore.
What did surprise me is the rise of Linux users (from <1% to 5%) and the drop of Mac OS users (from >5% to 1.7%).

#6

That is probably because 90% of the charts out there are based upon website visits and servers generally don’t browse the internet. That being said in general ppl don’t play games on their server either.

Anyways Solaris isn’t death, it just doesn’t exist in the desktop space.

Solaris on the desktop… well as far as I can tell it never made a dent. JDS had some area’s which where better then anything out there, but sadly that was saturated by the bulk of other area’s that weren’t of this day and age. Sun strategy of ignoring the desktop is certainly one of it’s bigger mistakes. As reality seems to be that what ppl run on their desktop influences what they run on their server.

The opensolaris strategy was poorly sold to the public, but upon close inspection seems pretty solid. I just hope it gets the backing that it needs.

Show a warning, I hate it when programs block these things the user should be in control of it’s own computer.

#7

Operating System Number of requests Number of page requests

  1. Windows 34,007,154 3,962,479
    Unknown Windows 15,634,354 2,328,633
    Windows XP 17,828,027 1,607,011
    Windows 2000 255,270 11,104
    Windows 98 208,646 5,839
    Windows ME 70,871 4,555
    Windows NT 5,994 4,539
    Windows 95 745 487
    Windows 32-bit 1,378 162
    Windows CE 1,809 89
    Windows 3.1 60 60
  2. OS unknown 2,732,395 357,325
  3. Macintosh 428,001 39,356
    Unknown Macintosh 279,049 26,574
    Macintosh PowerPC 148,952 12,782
  4. Unix 103,782 16,910
    Linux 92,840 8,541
    BSD 10,311 8,211
    SunOS 588 115
    IRIX 43 43
  5. Robots 2,358 793
  6. RISC OS 61 61
  7. Amiga 44 44
  8. BeOS 23 23
  9. OpenVMS 17 17
  10. OS/2 14 14

Here’s the stats for the PWO website, there’s some really rare ones in there.
I found it funny there’s some windows 3.1
Anyway this might help someone know some idea of the % of OS’s on a game website target for kids.

#8

Stop Press!!

Risc OS overtakes Windows 3.1 ;D

#9

Unknown OS overtakes Linux, sounds much better!

#10

From the posted results you could make the reasonable assumption that Solaris is less than 0.1%. This makes me wonder who downloaded my game :slight_smile:

Like most I can’t believe that Windows 3.1 is still being used, I can’t even imagine how difficult it must be to use that nowadays. They must be thankful that more and more is becoming web-based!

#11

Could those OS unknowns be from mobiles? I’d have expected more windows CE…

#12

Could be, but most likely different kinds of bots.