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Operating Systems (OS)
There are several different types of Operating
Systems to choose from. It all depends on your preference. Below I
have listed some OS and some information about them. I have also included
some links for some more info. There are four major categories that
operating systems fall into. First you have Windows OS that comes in Four forms itself. The first Win OS is 95/98/ME, the second is NT 4.0
,the
third is Windows 2000, and the fourth is the new XP. The second category is Linux / Unix. The
third category is Mac from Apple. The fourth is Novell.
Windows 95/98/ME
Win 95/98
Windows 95/98 is Windows Operating that has the least security but
allows the most versatility to use old DOS programs and games. This
is because the roots of Win 95/98 are based in DOS. Windows does
come with a price though, it has annoying errors that seem to close all
those important programs when you least expect it. Below are some
links if you would like to search out some more info. The first is a
sight that might help you with those errors. The second offers some
tips and tricks. The third link talks about some of those annoying
errors you might see.
Trouble with windows
Windows
Tips and Tricks
Windows 98
annoyances
ME
The latest edition of Windows 98 has a new
name, but it's not
the whole new bag of tricks you might expect.
Microsoft's Windows Millennium Edition (a.k.a. Windows Me) is the
company's third update to Windows 98. In a few months, you'll actually
be
able to buy a copy, and in a few months, you probably won't be able
to buy
a new home PC without it. But despite the brouhaha, it turns out that
Millennium only adds up to about Windows 98 3/4--it offers the same
customizable user profiles as Windows 95 and only a few upgrades from
Windows 98. And, despite promises of greater speed and stability, our
tests found that Windows Millennium was, in some cases, actually slower
than its predecessor.
In fact, anyone who needs under-the-hood business features (robust
IT-level security, for example) should lean towards Windows 2000 instead,
especially since Microsoft plans to use the same pricing structure as
Windows 98 SE's. Businesses won't even get price breaks on multiple copies
of Millennium.
Microsoft's
Goals for Millennium
- Stability (called "PC Health")
- Better tools for digital media
- More enjoyable gaming
- Easier, more reliable Internet tools
- Easier home networking
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If you run Windows at home, on the other hand, the decision to upgrade
is a toss-up. You'll be able to download cool new Millennium tools such as
the new Media Player and IE 5.5 for free without the upgrade, and Me's
speedier boot-up time won't even work unless your entire PC supports it
(which it undoubtedly won't, unless you buy Millennium preinstalled). But
for home Windows buffs who like the idea of better technical help,
improved sound and video features, and other small but neat enhancements,
Windows Me might sound mighty tempting.
So, before you clear about 300MB from your hard disk to make room and
shell out $109 for the upgrade (or $209 for the full version), consider
our review of Millennium's new tricks. This has been provided by CNET.
Windows NT Workstation / Server
Microsoft delivers a hit with Windows NT 4.0
by
Robert Lauriston
(8/16/96)
Despite the appeal of a crash-proof, secure, DOS-free operating system,
the hardware demands of Microsoft's next-generation 32-bit operating system
always seemed outrageous. Windows NT 3.1 and Windows NT 3.5x ran
sluggishly even on the fastest 486. Few people had 70MB of free hard disk
space on which to install the operating system. Fewer still had 16MB of RAM
to spare.
It looks as if the computing world is catching up with Windows NT. Today,
just about anybody can afford the muscle to run Windows NT Workstation 4.0.
Even entry-level PCs boast 75-MHz Pentium processors, gigabyte-sized hard
drives, and 16MB of RAM. In fact, many people who run Windows 95 could
easily make the leap right now to the more powerful Windows NT--without
giving up the Windows 95 user interface. So what's holding them back? One
possibility is cash: Windows NT Workstation 4.0 costs a hefty $319.
But for power users, it might be a bargain. This new release is
compatible with most popular productivity applications running under Windows
95, Windows 3.1, and DOS. It ekes more speed from your PC--in many cases,
while enhancing stability. Internet access, including ISDN and a personal
Web server, is built in and is more flexible than in Windows 95.
If Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 frequently interrupts your work by crashing
or hanging, Windows NT may be a solution. It can isolate the problem
applications by running them in separate virtual machines and isolating
their address space, which means you can stop and restart them without
crashing or hanging your system, and without leaving garbage in memory that
could cause problems later. Windows NT Workstation 4.0 also eliminates the
low-resources problem that plagues Windows 3.1 and occasionally causes
trouble in Windows 95.
You're not forced to format your hard disk with the NT File System (NTFS),
but you'll probably want to: it's faster and much less prone to damage than
the out-of-date File Allocation Table (FAT) used by DOS and Windows 3.x.
The NTFS allows heavy-duty security to protect sensitive files from
unauthorized access; is able to turn multiple hard drives into
high-performance, fault-tolerant disk arrays without special hardware; and
uses a superior compression scheme that lets you choose which drives,
folders, and even individual files you want to compress. The sole glitch is
that only Windows NT can read NTFS volumes, so if you plan to dual-boot back
to Windows, you'll need to keep at least some files in a FAT partition.
Windows NT Workstation 4.0 isn't for everybody. It isn't 100-percent
compatible with all the software you can run under Windows 3.1 or Windows
95, and it's a lot fussier about hardware. Laptop users and heavy gamers are
particularly likely to find NT Workstation 4.0 unsuitable. If it were less
expensive, upgrading would be a no-brainer for anybody running Windows 95
with an NT-friendly set of applications and equipment. Even at $319, it's an
attractive proposal for people who want a faster or more stable environment
than Windows 95 affords.
Will NT Become the World's Most Popular
Operating System?
It's
prettier, but there are more subtle changes that may affect performance and
reliability
Windows 2000 Professional /
Server / Datacenter
Microsoft released its first betas of Windows 2000
Professional back in 1997, so we've had plenty of time to admire its stability,
security, and slick interface. But we were concerned that Windows 2000 Pro's 29
million lines of code and 500MB hard-disk footprint might make the OS dog-slow
compared to current versions of Windows. We also worried that a system might
need a bare minimum of 128MB of RAM to run the new OS efficiently.
Our fears were groundless on both counts. In fact,
Windows 2000 is slightly faster than both Windows 98 SE and Windows NT 4.0
Workstation on many common business tasks, and it's only a shade slower on
others. And running the new OS on a PC with "just" 64MB of RAM is
certainly practical: In many cases, we saw very little performance gain when
running the same tests on PCs with 128MB.
Moreover, PC World tests of start-up and shutdown
times demonstrate that Windows 2000--despite taking every bit as long as
lead-footed Windows NT to boot up--has inherited Windows 98's relatively fleet
shutdown speed. For more info Click
Here.
Was it worth the wait?
Windows XP
Microsoft Windows XP Official
Site
Microsoft on a mission
The cool features of the
new Windows XP system come
at
a price: your freedom online. Click
here to find out why!
Home Office: A Windows XP Upgrade in Your
Future? PC
World
More info and reviews on Microsoft's XP
Operating System:
Linux
RedHat
6.0: A First Look
by William Henning
Editor, CPUReview
Copyright May 16, 1999
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
It has only been a bit over four months since I reviewed
Red Hat 5.2 - but those red-hatted
gnomes have been busy; not that Linus and his merry men have been
resting on their laurels...
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RedHat 6.0 includes more documentation and software than
any previous release; including for the first time the popular KDE
desktop.
Caldera has also released an updated distribution, OpenLinux 2.2, and
Suse has released release 6.1 of their distribution.
RedHat is getting easier to install all the time... |
For the purposes of this review, I used my 'Super 7' test computer,
configured with the
devices listed below:
Test System
- Soyo
5EHM Super 7 motherboard
- AMD
K6-2 400 processor
- Canopus
Spectra 2500 AGP Riva TNT video card
- Acer PCI NE2000 compatible network card
- Quantum SE 6.4Gb hard drive
- Pioneer DVD-rom drive
- generic ISA sound card
- Northgate Omnikey Plus keyboard
- generic serial trackball
- Nokia 447X monitor
Red
Hat Linux still lacks desktop dash Click here for info on Red Hat 5.2
Free
BSD vs. Linux
Unix
UNIX past
For the rest of the story
Since it began to escape from AT&T's Bell Laboratories in the early
1970's, the success of the UNIX operating system has led to many different
versions: recipients of the (at that time free) UNIX system code all began
developing their own different versions in their own, different, ways for use
and sale. Universities, research institutes, government bodies and computer
companies all began using the powerful UNIX system to develop many of the
technologies which today are part of a UNIX system.
In early 1993, AT&T sold it UNIX System Laboratories to Novell which was
looking for a heavyweight operating system to link to its NetWare product range.
At the same time, the company recognized that vesting control of the definition
(specification) and trademark with a vendor-neutral organization would further
facilitate the value of UNIX as a foundation of open systems. So the constituent
parts of the UNIX System, previously owned by a single entity are now quite
separate
In 1995 SCO bought the UNIX Systems business from Novell, and UNIX system
source code and technology continues to be developed by SCO.
In 1995 X/Open introduced the UNIX 95 brand for computer systems guaranteed
to meet the Single UNIX Specification. The Single UNIX Specification brand
program has now achieved critical mass: vendors whose products have met the
demanding criteria now account for the majority of UNIX systems by value.
For over ten years, since the inception of X/Open, UNIX had been closely
linked with open systems. X/Open, now part of The Open Group, continues to
develop and evolve the Single UNIX Specification and associated brand program on
behalf of the IT community. The freeing of the specification of the interfaces
from the technology is allowing many systems to support the UNIX philosophy of
small, often simple tools , that can be combined in many ways to perform often
complex tasks. The stability of the core interfaces preserves existing
investment, and is allowing development of a rich set of software tools. The Open
Source movement is building on this stable foundation and is creating a
resurgence of enthusiasm for the UNIX philosophy. In many ways Open Source can
be seen as the true delivery of Open Systems that will ensure it continues to go
from strength to strength.
Unix Reviews
Mac Operating Systems
The Following Are Operating Systems By Macintosh:
Mac OS
Mac OS is for Apple based computers. The current
version of Apple's Mac operating system is Mac OS 9. Mac OS X
relies on the Mach 3.0 kernel, originally developed at Carnegie-Mellon
University. The Mach kernel has been part of the open source community,
undergoing continued development by leading computer scientists and evolving
through the crucible of peer review for many years. Avadis Tevanian, Apple's
Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, was part of the Mach
development team at Carnegie-Mellon University, and he brings his years of
experience and expertise to bear on the continuing evolution of the Mach
kernel.
Apple Insider news and
rumors
MAC OS information
from Apple
Mac OS X
Beneath the appealing, easy-to-use interface of Mac OS X, you’ll
find an industrial-strength, UNIX-based foundation, called Darwin,
that is built from the ground up for superior stability and performance.
Darwin evolved from a joint effort by Apple engineers and programmers in
the Open Source software community. Together, they’ve created a
robust, modern operating system foundation to help your Mac run faster
and more reliably than ever.
Darwin features a protected memory architecture that allocates a unique
space for each application. When applications are isolated in their own
memory space, you don’t need to restart your computer if something
goes wrong. Darwin simply shuts down the offending application, letting
you continue working or playing without interruption.
Darwin also knows how to give priority to your primary application, but
still crunch away at other jobs in the background. Previously, a complex
task like rendering a transition in iMovie
or compressing video — jobs that can take several minutes or even
hours — would fully consume the processor until complete. But with Mac
OS X preemptive multitasking, the system remains responsive, so you can
still check email, work in another application or surf the web while
processing the task in the background.
Darwin features a super-efficient virtual memory manager. So you no
longer have to worry about how much memory an application such as
Internet Explorer needs to use plug-ins. When an application needs
memory, the virtual memory manager allocates precisely the amount needed
by the application. Automatically.
Darwin offers built-in support for dual-processor Power
Mac G4 computers. It might use one processor to run a complex image
transformation and the other to create a new MP3 file. All applications
benefit from the higher performance a second processor offers — and
multithreaded, complex image transformations, video compression or MP3
encoding operations can run almost twice as fast using Mac OS X on a
dual processor Power Mac G4.
At its core, Darwin uses BSD. If you’re a hardcore geek, you’ll like
having a full command set available to you from the terminal. Developers
will appreciate how easy it is to port existing UNIX applications to Mac
OS X. Plus, Mac OS X incorporates the time-tested BSD networking stack,
the backbone of most TCP/IP implementations on the Internet today.
Best of all, Darwin is distributed under Apple’s Open Source license,
so engineers around the world can help Apple make Mac OS X the best
operating system on the planet.
Some OS X Links:
Novell
A network company, generally accepted as the defacto standard for
true business networks. The Utah based company has had many
contenders for the Network King title but has always defended the
title easily. NT is the contender at present.
Novell and Microsoft have different ways of doing certain tasks;
both work very effectively. Novell has tried several other aspects
of the computer industry but has not found success in anything but
networks. They purchased Digital Research's DR DOS and WordPerfect
Corp. Both were miserable failures. They are however, still trying
to do things the Novell way with slight adjustments to accommodate
enterprise installations that work in an Internet environment and
have NT servers also. It seems to be working. See them at HTTP://WWW.NOVELL.COM.
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