Top Ten Worst Operating Systems

The Top Ten
1 Windows 8

Did Microsoft even test this with laptop users? Surely even limited tests with users would have shown that it's unpopular. They've tried to make an OS that is suitable for laptop, tablet and phone an instead created something that is awful for all of them. It beggars belief that a company with so much money is capable of creating something so bad.
To add insult to injury the Microsoft 'how to use windows 8' guides are worse than the product, if that's possible and trying to contact support is a waste of a lot of your time. There is nowhere to get real support or even make a complaint.

But then Microsoft isn't like most companies, as they have a monopoly; If Microsoft didn't have a monopoly, no one would choose their product and they wouldn't exist.

From my professional IT experience, the two most important pieces at least to an average user is to be able to access the old Start menu and be able to connect to internet. In Windows 8 both of these features "Start menu" and "Manage wireless networks" have been removed. Sure 8.1 added the Start menu back but it's poorly designed and doesn't give you all features back. You are still limited and forced to use the new interface for some features and programs. How can they expect an average non-technical user to get around and learn this system when folks in IT have to struggle with some features?

Furthermore, connecting to wireless and managing wireless profiles is a nightmare and you often fall back to third-party utilities, not to mention "limited or no Internet" connectivity issues with the new Network Manager utility. It gets even better, try accessing pictures from the so called Metro UI --it defaults back to Pictures folder and does not allow you to browse outside of it! Not everyone keeps their photos in "Pictures" directory so how this simple thing was missed by MS development team is beyond me. These are just few out of many examples that point out a failure of Windows 8 OS. It's a shame for Microsoft as they really did a fine job with Windows 7. I still have a hard time understanding how Microsoft gets away with these things, imagine a car manufacturer in 2013 going back to roll-up windows and trying to sell that vehicle to consumers!

2 Windows ME

Pure garbage of an OS. Attempting to Install this operating system typically results in endless blue screens, and cursing. Think a Windows 10 reboot loop is bad due to a forced bad driver update? Windows 8 with it's radical new user interface? Those don't even hold a candle to all the hidden surprises in Windows ME. If you are a lucky one to actually get this OS to install expect it to crash rather often. Many device drivers were unstable, and closing applications would leave quite a bit of garbage in the system ram slowing it down even further due to the OS not being capable of managing memory properly. Even if you do get somewhat decent drivers this OS has so many flaws that even Microsoft threw it under a rug as fast as possible with Windows XP. They could not fix it. I bet even their development team for this ran into issues during beta testing. Have this OS on a work computer back in the day? Step away to grab a cup of coffee only to return to a crashed OS with all your saved work gone. They should have named this OS Windows Blue Screen Edition.

3 Google Chrome OS

I like Chrome OS very much. It's true that it is very minimalist, being just a kernel that brings you to the Chrome browser. However, I love it! Quick boot time, instant updates, and no viruses. You can use Google drive for storage, or store local (or on a USB stick). I use Google Docs and Google Sheets, which read and write Microsoft Word and Excel files. It has great performance browsing the web, which is most of what I do at home. I have Windows 7 running on an ancient Dell Latitude D620 that I upgraded to 4 MB RAM if I need anything else.

It will slow down over time almost to the point of being unusable and the thing crashes on me when I have 2 or more news articles open. Oh and I have gotten more viruses through Chrome OS than I have through Windows XP and that is saying something. And after my first year of using the thing, the OS has been getting more and more buggy and unstable than any other OS I have ever had the displeasure of using, and I HAVE used Windows Vista for a solid 3 years.

4 Windows Vista

Ok ok enough. Windows Vista is far from worst. Windows 8 and ME crashed way more. The complainants I have with Vista is the bad installer, making it very hard to re-install or update to a newer SP. The thing about its negative rep is that it would not run right on XP and before systems making it bad. If you were like the people who bought it or still buy used computers with it you would know its not that bad. I have used Vista for years with out getting a single crash, and very few times where I had to hard restart my computer, unlike my other computer running 7 which is worst but just to say, I have hard rested it at least once a week from running my Web Browser, Skype, and Steam at the same time, along with a few other things.

I also think Vista was the worst ever OS developed by Microsoft. The OS was so slow that adding needed softwares was virtually out of the question. Disk cleanup and defragmentation didn't do any good to speed up the system. I have worked with windows ME, 8 and 8.1 but nothing comes even close to vista in terms of bugs, boot-up time sluggishness, crashes and... In my book, the best Microsoft operating system is Windows 7 followed by Windows XP, despite being abandoned by Microsoft.

5 iOS

This should be number 1! You cannot do anything Apple gracefully give you permission to do. You are only allowed to install programs from their App Store combined with most programs I use everyday not being allowed on the App Store makes it horrific! You also can't perform file management, which I should be able to do with ANY operating system! You also must have MEGA or Dropbox in order to transfer files, and don't forget that you can't manage the files being transferred to your phone! Oh but I can't uninstall it because iPhones must have iOS for calls and texts! It's so bad, there even exists guides to install Android or other operating systems on iPhones! People that say this is secure basically say locking themselves in a house and never coming out is the safe!

There's stupid Android users pointlessly setting a goal to abandon their beloved Android just like that! There's stupid Xiaomi fans pointlessly setting a goal to abandon their beloved Android UI just like that! Many poor have dreamed for what?
Brands that just exists in their mind! Brands like Xiaomi gave them everything they want. How about those rich who were tired of Samsung and Apple? Waiting to be poor! In order to enjoy what Xiaomi offers, or even enjoy Stock Android. At least iOS can't be altered, gives users a peace of mind, unlike Android that is in the big mess. But I still prefer Android and stay away from Samsung, no matter what happens to me.

6 Red Star OS

If you think that Windows 10 is the worst OS of all time then you've never heard of North Korea's own Linux distro that blocks stuff that North Korea finds offensive. This really should be #1 because of that.

So Windows 10 is worst than Red Star OS. Okay then.

7 Windows RT

This pile of vomit is worse than anything I've ever used. I used to own a Surface RT, I got it from school when I went there. Holy hell it was a miserable experience. Saying that they already upgraded all their PCs to Windows 8, which sucks, not going to lie, at least I could customise them somewhat. Not with Windows Real Travesty (RT) which was used on earlier models of the Surface before Microsoft abolished it to the fiery pits of hell along with Windows ME, where it belongs.

You can't do anything with Windows RT. Download Google Chrome to replace Internet Crapsplorer? Nope. It ain't happening. Actually you can't download anything from the World Wide Web which is plain awful. You can only download applications from the pathetically small Windows Store on the device. Also the applications aren't tailored for a touch interface. Trying to press those tiny buttons with the finger on Microsoft Word? Torture.

Simply put, Windows RT is a version of Windows 8 which is restricted beyond belief. Thought iOS was bad? Well, all you get here is to pick between different backgrounds for the Start Screen. -_-

8 Windows 8.1

Absolutely crap system. I thought Windows 8.1 was supposed to be an improvement but it's just a con.
It won't load programs that I easily used on windows 7.
Won't open Citrix.
Won't open Microsoft Office Home and Student 2010 edition.
Outlook on this is dross and takes so much to get to different email addresses.
I use a desktop pc. Don't need or want a laptop, tablet or smartphone.
Microsoft company should be shutdown or at least the people that thought up windows 8 and 8.1 should be sacked, never to be allowed to work with computers again.
Worst OS ever for ease of use.
Takes 6 or 7 times as long to try and find what I need and even then it is not always possible to be able to use it or even find it.

Tried it, it hogs too much memory. Checked resources and even with machine idle it was still using between 34%-42% memory usage, which is insane to me. Help/support for win 8.1's endless problems is nonexistent. Tons of useless apps splashed on the start screen (can you even remove them? ) It doesn't feel like an os, it feels like your phone placed on your pc. Everything is slow, don't bother buying it if you have 4gb of ram or less bcs you will lag like I did. Everything from a simple restart to a file search requires multiple clicks, sometimes going into an app to get to another app and then finally search or do the thing you originally planned. Very inconvenient, clunky, almost ugly. Login screen is simple and boring. I didn't try win 8, and I heard it's worse so I definitely will not try it in the future. Overall I'm very disappointed that I wasted money buying this and that I have to switch back to win 7.

9 Apartheid Linux

Avoid this at ALL COST. It has a lot of offensive stuff in it. I love Linux itself but this one is terrible.

10 OSX

Dumb and stupid usability of OSX or MacOS X makes it completely useless. The unix shell could be useful but lacks a proper package manager, everyone had to use a third party package manager like homebrew to install anything, all of which are extremely primitive and not user friendly. The graphical user interface is so stupid that it doesn't even show which applications are open properly, it shows small dots at the end of icons in dock, that does not indicate the number of windows open, so can't switch between windows of the same application. It is utterly confusing to maximize / restore or minimize a window, where does it go. All application files are hidden away, in a maze of dirty file structure with hundreds of wrong directory permissions, for example user doesn't even have full writes in their own home directory by default.

Overrated, stupid, the opposite of user friendly (actually apple tries constantly to make it all more difficult for the users), slow and with a lot of problems compared to Linux and Windows 7, over-expensive, did I mentioned slow?.. Wayward like an old man on a bad day... The list could go on forever.

I wished I threw my money in the garbage instead of buying that cancer.

The Contenders
11 Incompatible Timesharing System

The security is nil. Anyone can hack this operating system, so don't use this. (I know it came out in the late 1960s but I can see a OS that has better security and it came out before this OS)

Is the most unsafety os of all time. Anybody can hack it. If you scare of hacker NEVER use that wastebacket.

12 Windows 10

Standard hardware security not supported windows 10. This problem never fix it. So Worst-ever operating system it permanently. Suspended this OS now.

Bad news for Windows 10 users. License sale of popular operating system Windows 10 is stopped. After the 31st of the current month, this version will no longer be available for download. According to Engadget news, licenses for Windows 10 Home and Pro editions cannot be purchased after January 31. Microsoft will provide security updates until October 2025, even if the license sale is stopped. As a result, users will get protection from spyware, virus and other malware attacks. Microsoft recommends users to install Windows 11. From February, users will no longer be able to download any version of Windows 10 from Microsoft's website.

I've been running Windows 10 for the past 5 years (since 2016, when it was force installed on my old PC and replaced Windows 8.1, which at the time, I saw as an upgrade), and during those 5 long years, I've grown to resent Windows 10. My chief complaint is, of course, the forced updates. There was one time I was in the middle of playing Terraria, and out of nowhere, it updated! Not to mention it took an entire freaking hour to update. Other than that, Cortana sucks, Edge was awful until around 2020, and even then, it's still mediocre now, it's slow, it's delicate, it's restrictive (what happened to the DVD burner? That was a cool feature from 7 that they just removed for no reason), the search bar has freaking ADS for some reason, and it's a MASSIVE downgrade from great OSes of the past like Windows XP and 7. Here's to Windows 11 being an improvement.

13 iPadOS

Apple made an OS to "attempt to" address the problems with iOS. But it falls so short! There is now a user-accessible file system, but you can't even access all local user directories! A lot of problems with iOS are still in iPadOS like only being able to install apps from the iTunes app store, which lacks a lot of useful software you'll find on Android and Linux, and the absolute requirement of an Apple ID account!

Everything Apple makes is pretty much crap.

14 Symbian

Symbian was awesome back then, but after Google Mafia start with Stupid Android, Symbian removed...
Symbian was far better than Android, never get hang not crap like android.

It was good back there in 2001-2009, but now...

Nothing to do here.

15 Ubuntu Satanic Edition

It should be called "Ubuntu 10.10 rethemed".
Yes, it's rethemed for satanists, if you use it you'll actually go to hell.
Is programmist, who created ubuntu was satanist?

Wow this is a thing.

16 Red Flag Linux
17 JavaOS

Almost no one has heard of the one. JavaOS is, as the name suggests, written in Java. This was in the late nineties, though, so Java was slow. Oh and javaOS was pointless.

18 Firefox OS

The worst ever from Firefox.

ZTE did a terrible job of making the first Firefox phone, it's just bad

19 Windows 1.0

This is 1.0 which was released in 1985, not 2015. Anyhow it didn't have that many programs and was confusing to longtime command line users. And it is not an OS, but a graphical shell for MS-DOS.

This is actually an operating environment, not an operating system. Anyway, Windows 1.0 was considered bad even at the time.

This was made before the internet existed, idiots...

20 Blackberry OS

It's the worst mobile operating system. I tried to upgrade to iPhone but my mum won't let me have it. And my dad forced me to have Blackberry so I am stuck with this garbage.

I had a blackberry before and every time I attempted to use this operating system I wanted to chuck it out the window and run it over with a car.

Bad UI. Poor app support. Made for people who want to pay even for stupid apps. So secure that not at all user friendly. Hangs. Restarts.

21 IOS 7

It's not that bad but Apple could have put the options to put the Classic iOS 6 theme.

Really apple? Try again, I get headaches from looking at your interface.

The ugly flat theme of iOS 7 burns me out. I would rather use iOS 5 than stupid iOS 7.

22 MS-DOS 4.0

If you love text based operating systems and your favorite company is Microsoft, you would use this, I mean why would you use it? It's just a giant command prompt that all the versions of Windows have, Microsoft, please get better by keeping Windows 8 and building off of it.

It's a DOS what do you expect?
It wasn't that bad

Biggest pile I've ever seen.

23 Eeebuntu

That's not an Ubuntu misspell, it is bad, and it is now Aurora.

24 Windows 2.x

Windows 2.03 is not the worst OS. Also, I have never used it. And, it now includes a maximise, minimise, and close buttons. But it now has task overlapping (like todays versions of Windows) Also, Paint still looks like Windows 1.01, STILL!

Windows 2.x is not an operating system, but rather an operating environment. Same with the other DOS-based versions of Windows that were released before Windows 95.

Without Windows 2 you would still has a 1.0 interface with no multitasking.

25 Lindows

This is what happens if you put win ME and Linux together.It can't run even 1 program designed for Windows.That is why Microsoft brougt them.

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