I stumbled upon this article about a month ago, and I just had the opportunity to read it (my google reader starred items is backed up to the wazzoo).

Anyway, the article talks about alternative operating systems to MacOS, Windows, Linux, and the various popular UNIX variants (BSD, Solaris). I think that alternative operating systems should be encouraged, but at the moment they are of limited utility.

Looking at this list I see THREE amiga OS based/inspired operating systems. AmigaOS 4.1, AROS, and MorphOS. While I would love to use these operating systems. AmigaOS and MorphOS (the two commercially sponsored operating systems) do not work on x86! So I am not able to install on my mac under bootcamp or parallels! An AROS is more of a hobby project so useful applications aren't available in large number.

The remaining operating systems are nice attempts, and I hope they gain more support, but at the moment I feel like they aren't ready to replace my main OS - just like I thought linux wasn't going to replace my main OS five years ago.

With a little community support - and having them run on x86 - these operating systems can flourish. If you see a free one that you are curious about, I encourage you to download it an try it out.