Thomas' ITT Journey: October 3, 2013 - IC3, Operating Systems

Today we talked about operating systems. Mac, Windows, Unix, Linux, those are all desktop operating systems. Symbian, Android, iOS, Palm, Windows Phone 7/8, they are all mobile (or handheld) operating systems. The main one that we have focused on so far is Windows.

Me personally, I have a bit of knowledge in Linux and Mac as well (more Linux than Mac though). I have used Windows back since Windows 95, Ubuntu since 8.04, and Mac since 10.4 Tiger.

Linux is a (usually) free set of operating systems that are known as distributions. The more well-known ones are the Ubuntu family (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, etc.), Mint Linux, Red Hat (paid for enterprise Linux distribution), and Puppy Linux. I personally used to dual boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu on my original Dell Inspiron 1525 Laptop that I got a few years ago. Linux will run on older hardware pretty steadily

Mac OS X is a paid operating system that is developed my Apple Inc.. To use the Mac OS X line of operating systems you (usually, unless you are willing to do some hacking) have to own a Mac device, whether that be a Macbook (notebook), Macbook Air (notebook), Macbook Pro (notebook), Mac Mini (mini-desktop) or a Mac Pro (desktop). Mac is well known for not getting viruses and for being good on the battery of the notebooks. Macs can and will get viruses, and most of the Mac viruses will hit the system hard (I can speak from experience trying to help a teacher recover from one). The reason that their so good on battery is because of the specialized hardware that the operating system is developed for, unlike Windows which has so many different hardware developers for it. Last year I obtained a 2010 Macbook Pro for Christmas to continue my work on App development, so I have been able to work with that line of OSs recently, as well as when I helped out around my elementary school.

Microsoft's Windows is the operating system that I am most accompanied with. Windows started as an operating system simply known as MS-DOS, which stood for Microsoft Disc Operating System and was released in 1981. Now there is Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 that are out on the market and still commonly used today. I have had a lot of experience the past couple years with Windows XP and Windows 7, and just recently picked up a Windows 8 notebook for the course (with a Windows 7 virtual machine, and Windows 7 partition on my Macbook).

With Windows, all the way back to Windows XP, there have been multiple versions of the same operating system but with different features added onto it, here are charts that will (hopefully) make it clear on the upgrade paths of Windows