Operating Systems
A computer's operating system (OS) is software that instructs the computer on how to manage computer hardware, as well as interpret, store, and present data to the user. The dominant operating system worldwide for consumer computers is Microsoft Windows. Other important Operating Systems include
Microsoft Windows
The Windows Operating System, developed by Microsoft, is the predominant operating system worldwide. The latest version of the operating system Windows 11 was released in 2021 to mixed reception due to massive changes to the look and feel of the OS compared to previous releases.
Release History
Below are the most popular major releases of the Window operating system:
- Windows 11
- Windows 10
- Windows 8.1
- Windows 8
- Windows 7
- Windows XP
MacOS
MacOS is a UNIX based operating system released by Apple Computers. The original MacOS was released for Macintosh computers in the late 1990's. The operating system was shortened to OS X starting with Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. Starting with the release of version 10.12 Sierra, the name was changed again to macOS.
UNIX/Linux
Rather than a singular operating system released by a single company, linux operating systems come in a variety of distributions and flavors owing to the open source kernel. Various distributions are maintained and released by several different companies and teams.
The following are the most popular distributions of linux:
- Debian - Debian is an open source linux distribution maintained by the Debian team, and is the basis for several popular distributions.
- Ubuntu - Based on Debian, Ubuntu is developed by Canonical, Ubuntu is the most popular desktop linux distribution and offers a server distribution without a desktop enviroment designed for headless systems to be managed via command line.
- Fedora - Fedora a linux distribution developed by Red Hat and is the basis for their Enterprise Linux distribution.
- CentOS - An open source linux distribution based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
- OpenSuse - An open source linux distribution developed by Novell.
See also
References
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