EVERYTHING that the computer listens to and supplies goes
through the Operating System. The Operating System gives the comptuer
(hardware) the 'look & feel' that is so characteristic as to cause religious
feelings in users, technicians and developers of computer software...
The main functions of an operating system:
- Allow exchange of different system-parts(hardware) without affecting
software functionality
- Isolate the user (and the application software) from direct-hardware-commands
- build a 'commonality layer' of command-structure so that (for instance)
the command "open file "myfile.txt"" allows the opening of a file regardless
of if it is on a floppy disk, a hard disk, a removeable disk, an Optical
disk or on a network connection-attached-disk
- etc. etc. etc.
Computer Operating Systems have several other characteristics and/or methods
of classification that are sometimes useful:
- Users: Single(Windows95 / Mac OS 7.x & before) or
multiple (simultaneous) users (WindowsNT, 2000, Me, XP), Apple Macintosh
OS "X", Linux, Unix, Mainframe OSs
- CPUs: Single(Apple Mac OS 7.x, Windows95, older Mainframe)
or multiple CPUs (Windows 2000, XP, Apple Mac OS "X", Linux, Unix, Mainframes)
- Networked(almost all modern) or non-networked (Windows 95)
- Proprietary (specific to one vendor(Microsoft / Apple) or non-proprietary
(supplied by many vendors (Linux))
More to come here...
last updated: Wednesday_17_April_2002; revID:
1a