Talk:Operating system

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[edit] Market Share Diagram

I have no doubt that this diagram is very likely incorrect, and probably should be removed. I have removed it once citing a source which contradicts it and it was added back into the page, by someone undoing my edit.

For one, I've never heard of Desktop OS and when I search google, nothing pops up right away. (although it does seem like an overly general thing to search for.) This Desktop OS actually has a pie slice on the diagram, which is even more confusing.

Also, more importantly, market share has little or nothing to do with the purpose of this article...the popularity of operating systems has very little (or nothing) to do with how they work.

So I think the image should go...but I also want to make my reasoning clear as to why. Andy16666 (talk) 13:41, 28 May 2008 (UTC)


Even more to the point is that the data on which this diagram is based is false. The company which produced this data is a Windows networking organization supporting in-house web servers. Naturally, most of the connections to in-house IIS servers is from similarly based Windows users. Extending this to the web in general is silly. Using Windows web servers to represent the web is worse than silly. Developing false statistics from this analysis is statistics abuse. Garlovel (talk) 23:23, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Windows is not a OS, the Microsoft's OS "first name" is DOS.

removing Windows from "OS names" —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Krauss (talk • contribs) .

You're correct that the Windows layer atop DOS wasn't an operating system, but that ship has sailed. Most people are probably now using "Windows" to refer to the new-generation Windows products including Windows/NT, Windows/2000, and Windows/XP, and there, the operating system is most definitely not DOS. I don't think we need to get so pedantic at this point in the article.
Atlant 14:50, 17 April 2006 (UTC)


OK, I agree, it is correct. Only dicussion comments:

  1. Take care on reverting, people working with other contents in the same edit!
  2. My point... the citations on Itroduction is only for "... the most popular names when people talk about OS..."; DOS is a "very popular OS name", can cited, but Windows cause mistakes with the OS/GUI separation, it is treated on the Windows section.
Krauss 18 April 2006

Google say (the 3 most populars OS-names!):

Windows "Operating system":    165,000,000 
Linux "Operating system":      102,000,000
UNIX "Operating system":        63,400,000

"Mac OS"  "Operating system":   26,200,000
DOS "Operating system":         13,300,000 
VMS  "Operating system":         1,800,000

Come on: we can take off "Mac OS".

Two points. "Windows" historically referred to the technology of representing a user interface with segmented boxes which can present disjoint information streams; "XWindows", for example, was named for Xerox, which was innovative in this techology. Microsoft named their OS after this methodology, starting with MSWin 3.11 (a GUI application on top of DOS) and continuting past MSWin 95 (which no longer used DOS as an OS, but only as a command interpreter.) I refer to "MSWin" instead of "Windows" when I talk about the Microsoft brand name for it's operating system family, instead of the technology of windowing itself. This leads to the second point; the article says that
Operating Systems themselves have no user interfaces; the user of an OS is an application, not a person...
While this is appealing, it's not entirely true. Since MSWin 95 Microsoft has integrated the GUI with the OS; for example, you could boot Win3.11 to DOS, without invoking the GUI, but you can not effectively boot contemporary MSWin systems without the GUI. Pete St.John 19:23, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History and OS/360

The paragraph starts by saying "several major concepts ..." and then mentions the development of OS/360, which strictly speaking is not a concept. Also it mentions hard disks without describing what concept was involved. Also only hard disks are mentioned in relation to OS/360 even though the sentence is introduced with "also" (something earlier apparently got deleted).

I don't know enough about OS/360 to fix this. Anyone? Bueller? Ideogram 15:53, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Until TSO was introduced, OS/360 had no GUI, no user console whatsoever. It had file ownership, scheduling, protected supervisor mode, protected RAM, multitasking, multiple user scheduling, asynchronous I/O, and a Job Control Language with a "procedure library" which was a collection of macros in modern terminology. Much of the system code was written so that, when in RAM, it could be interrupted by a higher priority task, while the current task was stacked up to resume execution when the high priority task completed. In order to do this, code was written to be "re-entrant", i.e. it had to do make no changes for the current task that would affect the interrupted task. This was a pretty formidable demand, given that the RAM size might be as little as 64K. Albert 20:26 13 Nov 2006



Done. But I'm sure if we really put our minds to it, we can come up with more concepts. Certainly "computer networking" belongs in there somewhere (SNA, Bitnet, UUCP, etc.) Compatible filesystems may belong in there as well (UFS seems like the best example to me of an early, widely-compatible filesystem).
Atlant 16:17, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] OS vs Operating sytem

We should try to agree on some kind of policy for where to use OS or Operating system. Generally I think we should use operating systems where it is plural (OS's seems awkward), and try to use OS elsewhere, except maybe the first usage in a paragraph. Ideogram 16:26, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GUI's as shells

How is the GUI in Windows NT descended OS's a shell? Isn't the GUI integrated into the kernel there? Ideogram 16:37, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

No, definitely not. The actual Windows/NT operating system is quite small, with all of the other "stuff" implemented outside the kernel including stuff (like the HAL) that we might ordinarily bundle into the definition of OS. I'm not sure there ever really was a bundled GUI/OS, although you might make the claim for MacoS pre-X and I don't know enough about AmigaDOS to really say. Certainly all the workstations (using X/windows) have the UIs (including the GUIs) decoupled from the OS as does MacOS/X as does NT/2K/XP...
Atlant 16:53, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
I could have sworn the GUI was moved into the NT kernel for performance reasons. I'll see if I can dig up a reference. Ideogram 16:55, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
You may be right, but as your research this, be careful to distinguish "operating in Kernel mode" from actually being a part of the kernel; they're separable concepts. I could imagine for high graphical performance you'd want your windows drivers to have access to the hardware, a privilege often reserved for code operating with at least some kernel permissions.
Atlant 17:04, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
I think there's no question that architecturally the GUI is separate from the rest of the kernel. Whether this constitutes "distributed with tools for programs to display and manage a GUI" is a matter for discussion. Ideogram 17:14, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually after reading your changes closely I have no objection to the wording, since you say "sometimes". I might even say "usually". Ideogram 17:18, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] CLI's within windowing OS's

I think there's some question as to whether a CLI within a windowing system is really a "CLI operating system". Ideogram 19:08, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

In unix I start xwindows from the shell prompt, but in NTx I start the "DOS" command from within the "Windows" GUI. In Unix the GUI (X) is an application and a command-line-ineterface is the default acess by the operator; in MSWin (since about Win98) the GUI has been integrated with the OS and the CLI is merely an application. This isn't the greatest way to classify OS's but I'd say that MS/PC DOS, VMS, IBM 360 and System V are "CLI OS" and WinNT, XP etc are "GUI OS". MS is the only purportedly general purpose OS I know that integrates the GUI like that, although I think Mac intends that you not need the CLI and generally boot directly into the GUI. (But in NT you *must* boot directly into the GUI.)Pete St.John 16:17, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

The notion that an operating system includes any kind of user interface is not found in the formal understanding of operating systems taught in computer science curricula. Operating systems classes do not teach UI design; they teach about multitasking, virtual memory, permissions, device drivers, and such.

That said, the academic notion of operating system is not the same as the notion used by companies that have products which they call "operating systems": products such as Mac OS X, Windows XP, or Ubuntu Linux. These "operating systems" do come with user interfaces; in fact, all of them default to a GUI but also offer a CLI. However, from a computer scientist's understanding of what an "operating system" is, the GUI in each of these cases is simply an application that runs on top of the "real" OS. --FOo 03:00, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] copyedit request

I have gone over this article very closely. Can you be more specific about what needs to be done? Ideogram 22:19, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

You've done a great (and fast) job. I think you've covered it all. Remove the tag if you think it's good. -- Steven Fisher 22:30, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This article needs a great deal of expansion

This is not even close to being even considered complete. What about scheduling, memory management, kernel mode vs user mode, processes and threads, a fuller discussion of micro-kernels vs monolithic kernels, etc, etc? - Ta bu shi da yu 14:38, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Great idea! Go ahead! Ideogram 14:40, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, and what about a hospital as an operating system?? --Blainster 21:28, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
And we now have a woefully-inadequate section on security, written purely from the perspective of IP ports and completely ignoring every other aspect of system security.
Atlant 17:57, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I disagree that the information on kernels, scheduling, memory management, and processes threads, etc. should be expanded. As long as those technical concepts are briefly mentioned here, that is sufficient. Readers with the curiosity to find out what those things are can follow the links. Keep in mind that most people do not find kernels or big-endian v. little-endian to be very interesting (and I have tried to explain the importance of such technical concepts to many acquaintances over the years, with mixed results).
Operating systems are huge, complex beasts. The article should maintain a high-level overview of the subject with sufficient links to in-depth information for those who are interested.
I do agree that the information on security is grossly inadequate and should be expanded. --Coolcaesar 19:32, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I think that the information about threads at the threads on computer science are more like programming like than the thread manipulation by the os. -- SiegeM 23:25, 09 August 2006 (UTC)
for those topics there's some coverage in the kernel article. I'm not sure what could be included here.--BMF81 22:43, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion

It will be a good idea to add about a minimun of 3 pictures, maybe from Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

[edit] chickens

Who vandalised this page with "i like chickens"? WHO? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.76.113.125 (talk • contribs) .

In the opening lines "higher level functions" are not explained. I htink they should be replaced with something more clear.

The article history page says it was 206.207.175.170. Complain to them. ;-)
Atlant 19:11, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Most popular before Microsoft?

Please, tell me the name of the most popular Operating sysytem before MS-DOS became the most popular. You can answer right here as soon as you can Moscvitch 16:14, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

The world was fragmented.
In the PC space, CP/M was popular, but PCs were still not very common.
Meanwhile, every vendor had their own operating system(s) so MVS was very popular in the IBM world, VMS was very popular in the DEC world, and so on.
I doubt we could figure out (let alone agree upon) which O/S was most popular before MS/DOS.
Atlant 16:18, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. Yeah, I mean O/S for IBM-PC/ Moscvitch 16:39, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
IBM PC debuted with PC/DOS (which was actually MS/DOS). So there wasn't any OS for the IBM PC before MS/DOS.
Atlant 16:42, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
I assume that on "Home Computers", it was Commodore's KERNAL and Atari_TOS before QDOS came up. I remember having used GEM on TOS when I got some brand new Intel 80C86 with MS-DOS 2. On huge systems (not specifically meaning mainframes, but systems taking a lot of space ;)), Unix and VMS were quite common. Depending on the price, use cases were very widespread. In Fortran 4 times and with needs of every bit performance, the interest in common operating systems and their clean separation of tasks was not always an issue. But that's only a personal memory. 80.108.61.230 03:13, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Really sorry

I just want to apologise for my blatant re-write of the operating system definition, i'm just trying to help, but next time i'll do a bit more research before I think about trying it again, sorry again. - Mc hammerutime (talk)

[edit] Windows CE (+), a descendant of Windows?

In marketing and some aspects of usability, it's a part of the product family. But technically, it's neither a relative to DOS nor to the NT Kernel. So it could be misleading to imply a relationship besides having the same vendor. It's similar to calling the Apple OS on their iPod being a descendant of Mac OS 80.108.61.230 03:28, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] TSR programs not too easy

The article states: "although DOS itself featured TSR as a very partial and not too easy to use solution" The problem with writing TSR programs was, that it was too easy. From a programmer's view, making a program TSR was easier than forking and deamonizing on a modern Unix system because of its limitations. You didn't have to care about signal handling - and that's the point. They were limited and lacked IPC. But saying it would have been hard is not exactly what the problem was about. What should be said that forking was not possible and the need to handle parallelization for yourself by vector-swapping and interrupt-violation mania. When a TSR compares to MySQL's auto-increment and daemonizing to Oracle's sequences+triggers- which one is easier and which one is more powerful to work with? ;) 80.108.61.230 03:50, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

What are you talking about? Your comment makes little sense —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 58.166.146.197 (talk) 16:09, 18 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] What about the other MAJOR OSs of our time?

Novell? Solaris? Symbion? Windows CE? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.97.20.142 (talk) 22:40, 26 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Market Share

The market share statistics that are being quoted here apparently come from [[1]]. These statistics are for computers that surf the internet, and do not include web servers, database servers and the like.

The statistics at [[2]] tell quite a different story. In the realm of web servers (computers that run the internet), Apache/Unix machines are 60% of the installed base. There are 63,800,000 such machines. While this article does suggest that the 94% statistic is for desktop computers, there is no mention of Unix's dominance in the web server world.

The mainstream press got it completely wrong, as usual. In this article, [[3]], it is stated that "Windows runs on more than 95 percent of the world's computers." Not possible.

I added a citation for the 94% figure in this article. Maybe someone could put something in the Unix section about web server market share? Robertwharvey 03:18, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

You are right when you say that Internet-connected desktop computer operating system market share quotes are being misused to discuss operating systems in general.
However, you're doing the same thing with the Netcraft numbers. Netcraft tracks particular types of Web servers, not operating systems. Apache runs on a lot of other systems besides Unix; it is erroneous to conclude that the proportion of Apache Web servers is the proportion of Web server systems running Unix. (Notably, Apache can run on Windows.)
What's more, market share is not really a very useful figure for people who aren't in the sales business. For ordinary users, installed base is more interesting, because network effects (like, can you get support for it?) depend more on installed base than on market share. Netcraft tracks installed base, not market share ... but of the wrong thing for this discussion. --FOo 09:42, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
The term "Market Share" here was making me nuts (for reasons similar to the above). So I've written "Note on Market Share" as a subsection under "references". Pete St.John 16:07, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
"Market Share" Tug of War. I see that we have a small edit war, maybe an edit skirmish, over the "market share" tables. What I wonder is what is so attractive about it, and to which demographic of editors. To Computer Scientists and related types (computer hobbyists, software engineers, whateve) Operating System is a scientific and engineering topic and the large amound of space in market share tables is inappropriate...even if it were meaningful data, which is disputed. I'm thinking that to undergraduate business majors, "operating system" is a commercial product category of special significance (like "oil" or "commodities"). I don't think the tug of war will go away until we figure out what's motivating whom, so we can have a dialog with them. Pete St.John 18:30, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I was the one of the participants in the tug of war over market share tables. I didn't see the note at the bottom of the page at first, which notes the statistics' dubious reliability. I guess that's okay, so I'll stop reverting it, but I'd really like to see "personal computer" market share specified in the tables as well ... maybe I'll add that later. As for my motivation, well, not only do I think the statistics don't really belong here, but I think that HitsLink statistics in particular are horrendously flawed. In particular, I think that they overcount the number of Apple computers by mistaking Konqueror on Linux for Safari on Mac -- Konqueror has a very significant share on Linux, and if you look at the browser table, Konqueror only shows up with a .01% share, so something's fishy. I have no idea how they get their statistics, and I think that quoting such unreliable statistics doesn't really add to the article. I'd still like to see the tables removed, but I've made that known and spoken my piece, and others obviously disagree about their utility, so I won't take them out anymore. 192.94.94.105 21:21, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I have to agree. Any way to measure any OS is going to be very unreliable and biased-- if I have my user agent set to Vista IE to access certain pages, even though i'm using firefox on linux, or especially if browsers are misrecognized, how is that fair? In addition, it's biased to the site that measures it-- a site in english might be biased towards newer proprietary OS, such as OSX and Vista, whereas less needy or open source OS such as BSD and Linux might have more usage in countries that don't access that page, or the internet at all. Wikipedia's aim is to provide an encyclopedia that people can use to learn about things, putting up these figures is incredibly misleading and gives the impression that there is a clear cut way to measure OS popularity. Saying that "estimates of users are between 10%*REF* and 50%*REF*, although there is no accurate way to measure market share for OS" in the text might be ok, but having the tables there as if they are a fact is incredibly misleading --lucid 21:31, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Future of operating systems?

This page would benefit from a section detailing what the future holds for operating systems.

As with most engineering the future looks exceedingly bright due to SCIENCE FICTION writers and movies. We are where we are today with thermo-chemical warfare, political-industrial complexes, popular consumer gadgets and global commerce largely due to national policy makers. So the future of computing will address those aspirations, such as global warming carbon reduction, agro-business famine farming, disaster relief (except the FEMA trailers), cad driven manufacturing and robotics, and new warfare weapons touted to exceed "War of the Worlds": Tasers and lasers, shockingly awful assault weapons, and billions of dollars for munitions, soldiers, and modern war toys. I would imagine that if the USA/UK/AU had not spent trillions in Afghanistan and Iraq (I & II) we would already have green lawn golf courses, mineral mining, and vacation cruises all on the Moon and Mars via Virgin Atlantic. Engineering and robotics must vastly improve before there will be anything close to photon torpedos, warp-speed, and worm-hole travel thanks to Star Trek, Contact, or Stephen Hawking which will hopefully happen much sooner than 75 million years, give or take a few red or blue shifts. :User:bwildasi Fri May 16 20:53:09 UTC 2008 —Preceding comment was added at 23:55, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Unix based?

"Free software Unix variants, such as Linux and BSD, ..." Linux is not a Unix variant, but I don't know what to put in its place that would maintain the way the Unix-like section of the article without giving linux its own section. Can someone give me advice as to how I could do this or fix it for me? Zarathrustra 18:47, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't mind calling Linux a (family of) unix variants. Actually, Red Hat was able to join the Unix Consortium at one point, so legally, Linux is a Unix. "Unix" had been an AT&T brand name, and "Linux" is a brand name that started with Linus Torvalds, who wrote a kernel for unix to port it to the Intel platform. All of the Open Source Foundation, Torvalds, GNU, Berkeley, numerous authors sharing source code, and AT&T (which gave a source license freely to Berkeley) deserve credit for making unix accessible to the public at large, enabling cooperative development across platforms, continents, and generations. Pete St.John 19:32, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
Linux was one of many ports of UNIX to the PC and was always describe as such until it became legally necessary to claim it is a completely different OS. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DonPMitchell (talk • contribs) 03:07, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] External Security subtopic Network Address

I've added the hyperlink for network address, but don't know what would be a good topic to link it to. It goes to a disambiguation page. Any help is appreciated. Thanks. --Bookinvestor 21:16, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is TRON really important?

I find it difficult to believe that the TRON Project deserves to be mentioned alongside Unix/Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X as a major operating system with its own heading. The TRON section is pasted from its Wikipedia article, a bunch of the links are broken or go to outdated, abandoned-looking pages. Can anybody more qualified than me verify that TRON is important enough to merit an entire section of its own in the OS article? Even if it does, it probably shouldn't be the same text simply pasted from the opening of its own article. --Skyfaller 22:26, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I've removed that section. There's about a dozen other OSes that are much more notable than it that aren't even mentioned in the article much less have their own section. --Android Mouse 19:40, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spam - 'Iranian OS'

In the first paragraph, it says:

Windows, Linux,Iranian OS ( Code name SAM ) , and Mac OS are some of the most popular OSes.

Iranian OS ( Code name SAM ) should be removed, not being a popular operating system

Never heard of it, and the contributor was anonymous, so yeah, I revereted it. Please feel free to revert stuff that looks patently self-serving (in this case, nationalistic). The burden is on that fellow to cite a reference to the significance of the thing. Pete St.John 17:02, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] OS and memory

Since when do OSes manage registers or CPU cache? Compilers do, but AFAIK, OSes don't. They do need to know about 'em in order to perform context switches (multitasking) but in general, I don't think they make the decisions WRT whether to use registers, cache or RAM. --Elvey 22:35, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Processors can do alot of stuff autonymously, but whatever a processor can be told to do, is defined exactly by it's assembly language. Specifying a register is typical of assembly languages. The C compiler let's the programmer *request* a (non-specific) register, and FORTRAN does not, but either compiler will let you link assembler; so any program (including the OS itself) can in principle micromanage registers in the processor (through native assembler macros or libraries). If you wanted to write a small linux kernel to optimize the use of cache for a beowulf, please, feel free :-) Pete St.John 18:12, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
That doesn't answer the question. The answer is: since never. The first two sentences of the "Memory management" section are simply wrong. The whole section is poorly written. KenshinWithNoise 03:39, 24 March 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by KenshinWithNoise (talk • contribs)

[edit] No user interface?

The statement from the intro paragraph: "Operating Systems themselves have no user interfaces; the user of an OS is an application, not a person." Is that true? What about DOS? What about Windows? Sure, if the OS has a separate kernel that doesn't provide UI, then the kernel has no user interfaces, but the operating system encompasses more than just the kernel. I'm not an expert, it just sounds suspicious. Fuzzypeg☻ 00:25, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I hadn't noticed that bizarre edit until now as I don't monitor this article too closely. Thanks for flagging it. I just traced it to this edit [4] by User:Buonoj on 30 April 2007. Oddly, it was that user's ONLY edit ever. I believe the edit is so inaccurate as to constitute possible vandalism and should be deleted.
User interfaces are an integral portion of operating systems and are taught as such in computer science courses. Indeed, the user interface is usually discussed as one of the services provided by the operating system to applications. I am fixing the lead paragraph immediately. --Coolcaesar 18:56, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
The OS of a general purpose computer has I/O (Input Output), but not necessarily what most people would call a "user interface". The autodiagnostic electronics in a car don't talk to the driver (although they could and in some cars might), but they have a port to offload data to a handheld device, and **that** device has a display and buttons for the mechanic (the user). A router may not have a UI, but it has input (ethernet) and may have a port open for telnet (an application that could be used by a person to reconfigure the router) etc. Tavern games I worked on used ROMDOS, and had no UI, but at boot time loaded the game framework, which was an application with UI (touchsceen and coin counter) that loaded games (when user selected a game thru touchscreen and paid coins). UI refers to interfaces intended specifially for people, like buttons, windows, keyboards; I/O generally encompasses any signal, which might be telemetry from a satellite or an infrared proximity detector. Pete St.John 19:28, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

An operating system may provide facilities for constructing user interfaces, such as a graphics display driver or a keyboard driver. However, what we now call a "user interface" (such as the Macintosh or Windows user interface) is a congeries of libraries and application programs which use those OS facilities.

A Web browser (like Internet Explorer) or file manager (such as the Macintosh Finder) is only part of an "operating system" when that word is used as a marketer or product manager would use it, rather than as a computer scientist would use it. These are distinct uses of the word, just as "set" means something different to a collector (as in "Collect the whole set!") from what it means to a mathematician. --FOo 07:40, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the above clarification of the difference between how a computer scientist or scholar would define operating system versus how a marketing person would define operating system. Its pretty clear that marketing people conflated "computer system' and "operating system" a long time ago and as a result caused great confusion about what an operating system is in the general public. Using the marketing definition of OS would allow you to make a reasonable claim that solitaire was part of the Microsoft Operating system. :-) And it clearly is not. It is part of the "computer system".

Since this entry is part of the Computer Science category on the Wikipedia lets make sure we are using the proper computer science definitions. If it were a marketing entry we could use the marketing definitions. Jjk 05:20, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

"Computer system" typically refers to the computer hardware (the computer itself, screen, mouse, etc.), not the software. Also, people here appear to be confusing "Operating system" with "Operating system's kernel", which is the basic process and memory manager that people are speaking of. Although an OS can be composed of just a kernel, nowadays it typically includes various inseparable additional services, for example a gui framework server such as a x server. Rami R 12:41, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
  • The sentence in the lead paragraph, [a]n operating system is an interface between user and hardware furthers the confusion discussed above, instead of clarifying it. An operating system may include an interface between application programs and hardware; in some embedded devices the application is built into the OS and there is no user interface at all, e.g. electronic fuel ignition in an automobile engine, it doesn't even have an "on" switch. In some OSs the GUI is built into the OS and the OS cannot boot without it. Those are entremes. In a typical general-purpose computer, the OS provides an interface between applications and hardware, and the applications typically include user interfaces. Pete St.John 17:01, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
To answer Fuzzypeg and Rami R's questions, "What about DOS?" -- even in DOS, we can clearly distinguish between the OS kernel and the user interface. The command-line user interface in DOS is usually "COMMAND.COM". (The "cmd.exe" implements more or less the same command-line user interface in a "Windows DOS box"). The pretty graphical user interface that shows the desktop on a Windows box is the "Windows Shell".
I think we all agree that the kernel does *not* include "COMMAND.COM" or the "Windows Shell" or "solitaire".
Now please answer my question: If you think there *is* a difference between an "operating system" and a "operating system's kernel" -- if you think that "Windows Shell" is part of the operating system, even though we all agree that it is not part of the kernel -- then what exactly is the difference? And how do we distinguish between that "operating system" and applications such as "solitaire" ? --68.0.124.33 (talk) 02:29, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Your hands and eyes can not directly touch or alter the operating system short of touching your finger on a boot floppy's magnetic film. The OS manages the hardware (attached devices: monitor, keyboard, mouse, floppy) and software programs (Windows Explorer, Solitaire) you use via device drivers and APIs. To interact with the OS you need a shell (such as the "DOS PROMPT" C:> command line interface), or other program (software application) such as a utility scandisk, fsck, dd, fdisk, or application such as a click of a mouse pointer on the "Start Menu" to open Excel, or Internet Explorer. All of these rest above the kernel with its support libraries, and interact by means of application programmer interfaces (APIs), pipes ">,|,<", and sockets such as TCP, or UDP, clipboard, and memory snapshots, configuration and storage files. The distinction for modern systems is that the kernel is "protected" from end-users, unless you happen to click on your favorite booby-trapped website link, or email trojan designed to escalate privileges. :bwildasi Fri May 16 22:02:42 UTC 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bwildasi (talk • contribs) 01:03, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree the operating system may have no uesr interface. Best examples would be embedded microcontrollers, like the above mentioned injection/ignition control units, which work completely non-interactive. It would be easy to make one too, out of some of the ordinary OS-es like DOS - if you removed COMMAND.COM and replaced it by a program that, say, computes Pi number, which does not interact and just sends results over a network - here it is, an OS without a GUI. :arny (talk) 17:59, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Unix vs POSIX

I reverted a recent addition which attempted to clarify the difference between "Unix" and "POSIX"; but was just too long, rambly, and error-ridden (e.g. "Postix", you have to correctly spell the key word of the section). I'll drop a note on that editor's page to suggest composing a tighter contribution. Pete St.John 16:26, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Anonymous user needs help with homework?

what are some of the utilities in a operating system . please —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.255.113.5 (talk) 13:45, 10 October 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Customising the desktop?

Me, the anonymous person, saw the image on the article showing a curstomised OS showing the computer stats, like: RAM: 250/3000 Can anybody explain how to make that happen? I really need that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.183.127.178 (talk) 20:33, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Multics

There is no reference to multics except in external links! Multics IS the major development in operating systems, was just an experiment by a developer who worked on multics, who wanted a stripped down version of multics for himself--85.96.29.197 (talk) 10:02, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Sure, there is an article Multics. It was a big effort and has a place in history. And I'm guessing you meant, unix was an experiment by a developer (Ken Thompson) who had experience in MULTICS? Pete St.John (talk) 17:29, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
sorry, your guess was right, I somehow deleted unix after the comma. Anyway, there is an article about multics, but this article (operating system) has no reference to it--160.75.91.122 (talk) 08:04, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
OK, two things bugged me; the absence of historical context (too broad an axe since creating the seperate history article, which should be linked) and burying Thompson under Plan 9, which is merely the most recent infra-Bell development along the Unix path. So I put a new historical sentence: I changed the title "unix like" to "Unix and unix-like", added Thompson at the top, connected the languages (B --> C) with the development (MULTICS --> Unix --> ....) and linked to the History article. My intent is a short hub connecting history, people, and technology at a very influential place and time. Pete St.John (talk) 17:04, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Modularity != User Mode

I think the discussion of GUI's contains a slightly inaccurate comment about modularity. You can say that X-Windows runs outside the kernel, but that is not the same as saying that it is modular and Windows or Mac OS were not. Windows (9x and NT) was considerably more modular than UNIX, in the sense that it was built out of components with object interfaces (COM). The GUI was contained in one of three primary dll's that made up the kernel (kernel.dll, user.dll, gdi.dll). UNIX is more modular today, but for a long time was entirely monolithic, to the point where installing a new device driver required compiling the entire kernel (e.g., SUN OS in the 1980s). DonPMitchell (talk) 03:15, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Much is made of the awkwardness of recompiling the kernel to install a device driver, and it's a good point, but modularity comprises more. I suggest as a thought-experiment, administering an NT server for say Exchange, without a GUI, or with a third party GUI. Compare that to admin'ing a Unix server with your choice of fvwm, other window managers; Gnome, other desktops; or none of that at all. If you ever had to use something like PCAnywhere (pushing pixels over a telephone line, as opposed to concise geometry as in an X or HTML communication) then surely you have some sympathy, at least, for the idea that modularity of the GUI was an issue for us in MS OS's. 3.11 was great, it was a UI on top of the OS, DOS 3.x, but since Win95 about, that's been problematical for developers. Programs don't interoperate easily in an environment which assumes communication with an application is by clicking on coordinates. And while recompiling may be awkward, at least it's possible. Pete St.John (talk) 18:29, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Extensible GUI

The section about GUI doesn't discuss the important issue of extensibility, for example OLE Automation in Windows and OpenDoc (not to be confused with ODF) on the Mac. An attempt to implement this on Linux was called Bonobo, but I'm not sure what the current situation is on Linux. Extensible GUI is very important commercially, since it permits many applications to act as development platforms, for example the many specialized extensions to MS Office (e.g., for dentists offices, and such). This also permits third party extensions of functionality, for example adding natural language translation or voice recognition plugging into a word processor and extending its interface with new groups of controls or buttons. DonPMitchell (talk) 03:24, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Lock This Page ??

I have noted needless addenda made to this article by zealots of specific 'OS Camps'.

While this factual freedom of notation does add to the information contained within this article , it does produce some form of redundancy which is not suited to encyclopedia articles e.g (previous revisions of article, and updates that have occurred)

the seperate lines

"Windows is also used on servers." "Mac OS X has both server and personal versions."

was condensed into

"Linux, Mac OS X and MS Windows all have server and personal variants"

On another more obvious note, the history of certain operating systems and the origination of their code and concepts (apple Gui, the circumstances of MS purchasing DOS, the patent wars) and some other PR related matters are at high risk of being changed by the PR departments of those parties.

Saijao (talk) 02:22, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

yeah, this page gets alot of attention, but it's sort of a continual sprinkle, never downpours. I think a zillion people have this watchlisted, and there are few big fights. Every once in a while an "OS Camp" gets a small change in, and later some other camp will get back a small change. I think in general CIS students who care about operating systems, as opposed to avid consumers of particular packages, have disproportionate say and the article stays more or less in bounds. It's kinda funny to watch, but most of the changes are small and they are generally overwritten with new small changes. Probably there are bigger fights at the articles for particular OS's. Pete St.John (talk) 22:40, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Linux sreenshot.jpg

Image:Linux sreenshot.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 23:13, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

So, I went and looked, and noted this (boldface mine):
If this is a screenshot of free software (GPL, BSD, etc.) do not use this template! Use the license tag that correspond to the license instead, optionally alongside {{Free screenshot}} to categorize as a free screenshot
In other words, since this is a screenshot of free stuff, it's free to use. It merely has to quote the Gnu Public License, which basically is "use as you see fit, but don't lie about authorship". We're not lying about authorship so we're OK. But I'm not a WikiLawyer myself. Pete St.John (talk) 23:24, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GNU/Linux as the correct naming convention.

"Linux" is not an operating system in itself. It's a kernel. When referring to the complete operating system that combines the GNU userland with the Linux kernel the correct name for that system is the GNU/Linux operating system. It's not correct nor precise or accurate to use just the word "Linux".

The use of GNU/Linux as the correct naming convention for Wikipedia has been confirmed by its founder Mr. Jimmy Wales.
Lightedbulb (talk) 03:16, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Might be nice to link us that sentence, it might be interesting. Anyway, I generally prefer to speak of FOSS unices (such as FreeBSD or Red Hat) myself, because generally we are distinguishing development environments, and not kernels, and the term "Operating System" is somewhat broad. Even in this article. My own soapbox is that the term "linux" is over-used; Torvalds wrote the most common kernel for the wintel platform in use today, a great contribution, but there have been many contributions to the widespread adoption of Unix (tm) and it's numerous descendants (unices). I can't even cope with an NT environment without gvim. Pete St.John (talk) 19:17, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
If you want to talk about the naming convention, please visit the appropriate place for that discussion -- Talk:GNU/Linux naming controversy.
Discussion of the naming convention has moved to Talk:GNU/Linux naming controversy.
That would be a great place to point out what Mr. Jimmy Wales has said.
Have a nice day. --68.0.124.33 (talk) 14:23, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] CLI

I see no mention of CLIs (Command Line Interface) when I used "Ctrl + F" on the article. Can someone add this in? Possibly after the mention of the GUI? Glad to see BIOS is in there, but shouldn't it also be called the Menu Interface? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.2.24.211 (talk) 19:09, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Article name change to Operating system (distribution)???

This article apparently uses the "marketing" definition of "Operating System" as opposed to the original, technical, and dictionary definition (according to Merriam-Webster:[5] ) of "Operating System" (as already noted in the topic "No user interface?"). By the technical definition, the operating system is a piece of software that is an interface between the system's hardware and other software programs to request services of said hardware (memory management, process management, network communication, etc), things such as user interfaces (graphical or otherwise) fall under the category of "other software programs" as that particular program doesn't make requests directly to the hardware but instead goes through the kernel process for this request.

Unfortunately, marketing and media outlets seem to have a history of misusing and/or under-qualifying terms (technical and otherwise) which already have very specific and set definitions (for example, the term "hacker" has been used inappropriately since at least the early 80's when compared with it's original sub-cultural definition that originated at least a decade earlier, especially concerning the added criminal connotation where as the previous definition was more positive ... or at the least judgment-neutral). To avoid the whole "Operating system" ambiguity, I propose that the article title be changed to "Operating system distribution" with a disambiguation note titled either "Operating system (Computer Science)" or "Operating system (kernel)" or something similar that redirects to the article which uses the technical definition of the word. "Operating system" could still direct here as the "misused" definition is more popularly used among laypersons, but the distinction still should be noted somewhere.MerlinYoda (talk) 19:48, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, some people (e.g. the multitude of fanatics who insist on referring to "GNU/Linux" in all contexts) believe the opposite is true: the operating system is the "other software" and the kernel doesn't count. The GNU page refers to it as an operating system. I don't really care one way or another, but can we at least make up our mind? I think it would be better to hedge the definitions on all of our pages by saying "some people define this more broadly as..." than to be internally inconsistent in articles that link to each other. « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 07:20, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
I agree that there needs to be some sort of consistency, "hedging the definition" might be a good idea to get some semblance of consistency. The whole "Linux or GNU/Linux" fiasco that you touch on comes from this very problem of having various definitions/interpretations for the same word (not counting homonyms) and having no way to infer which interpretation should be used ... at least not from any apparent contextual clues. I assume that when someone says "The operating system on my computer is Linux" that they are using the "technical" definition that is synonymous with "operating system kernel", and if someone says "The operating system on my computer is GNU/Linux" that they are using the "marketing/modernized" definition that is synonymous with "operating system distribution". I've wondered (aside from "official" reasons given) sometimes why "GNU/Linux" instead of "Linux/GNU" ... I think I know why, but that isn't valid to the discussion here really. Then there are those that will say the Operating system on their computer is "Windows" and "Mac OS" which really isn't correct in either sense of the word as "Windows" could be anything from "Windows 95" to "Windows Vista" distribution-wise and I don't know how many different "kernels" all those distributions tie to.MerlinYoda (talk) 20:33, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
The best thing to do would be to fix the article. We do need an article simply titled "Operating system"; we just need to establish what it should talk about.
Regarding your specific complaint: although the original operating systems did not have graphical user interfaces, modern PC operating systems like the Mac and Windows do, and on Windows they are in fact in the kernel (for performance reasons). I do not think it is a misuse of the term; definitions change all the time and we should serve the expectations of our readers and not be pedantic. Fundamentally when writing this article we should be thinking, "What will most readers be looking for when they search on 'Operating system'?" The fact that Unix-derived OS's run the GUI as a user-level task is a technical detail that average users are not aware of (although we probably should mention it in this article). --slashem (talk) 08:00, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
While it is true that more and more is getting put directly into the "operating system kernel" as system capabilities progress for various reasons (performance usually the one given, but I have doubts as to whether it's always the primary one), I could have sworn that, at least for Windows, the actual GUI is a process entirely separate of the kernel (i.e. nothing in the interface is making direct requests of the hardware). This may have changed with Windows Vista or maybe even somewhere in Windows XP, but short of trying to find technical sources it's hard to say one way or the other as I haven't kept track.
Putting this aside, I don't think it's that definitions for words change over time so much as definitions get added over time (and some become archaic and are dropped). This may seem like a pedantic point, but it's important as offhand I cannot think of any term where a possible definition for it includes a previous definition and then adds on top of it ... especially terms originating from fields where precise definitions are important (silly example: a "thigamabob" can, by definition, be a "whatsit" or can be a "whatsit and a thingamajig"). For example, knowing whether a "megabyte" meant 1,000,000 bytes or 1,048,576 bytes was an issue previous to the coining of the term "megbibyte"(sp?) but they were completely separate definitions given for completely separate reasons. "Operating System" on the other hand seems to have had a set definition that was "misused" (for lack of a better term) at a later point to include components that were not part of that definition (i.e. there was a need to coin a new term). It's that misuse that is problematic and is no different than when other words are misused, this is usually due to a perceived understanding of a term while lacking knowledge of the actual definition(s) (many people, myself included, have likely been guilty of this). I don't think an article on a topic stemming from such a a technical background could be well written by thinking "What will most readers be looking for when they search on 'Operating system'?" as most "readers" are like looking to be informed on what exactly an "Operating System" is as opposed to having expectations as to generally what should be in the article.MerlinYoda (talk) 20:33, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm not going to argue with you here over how language changes over time. I do feel very strongly that Wikipedia in general is not here to assert that a common usage of a term is a "misuse"; it is something that dictionaries avoid, for instance. Wikipedia believes no one "owns" an article, well it is even more true that no one "owns" a word. When the vast majority of the world (outside your technical clique) uses a different definition, you are tilting at windmills.
Fundamentally you are not trying to understand your audience, which is not technical and will indeed expect discussion of GUI's here, but trying to change common usage, which is futile. Are you going to try to remove references to cracking from Hacker? --slashem (talk) 22:15, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps "misuse" isn't the best word to use ... still the "common usage" definition is pretty much a bastardization of original "tecnical" definition (and I'm sure "Operating System" isn't the only word to be "redefined" in common usage this way despite having an otherwise accepted, long standing, and standardized definition). Also, I would not try to remove references to cracking from Hacker as long as they are made clear that the context in which the word is being used is from the more recent "media-created" definition of Hacker as opposed to the original definition. If anything, I would try to frame them into that context rather than remove them, but that is a different situation all together. Still, just because there's a "common usage" of a term, that doesn't necessarily mean that it should be the presented over all others. It depends greatly on the circumstances of that usage.
In any case, the recent rewrite as of now is actually pretty good. Although, if we really are to "understand our audience" as you say, it might be of some worth to add a note on how the "common" perception of an "Operating System" is "The software that provides an interface to the hardware as well as the the software that are packaged with it.". A layman would probably agree with that statement "Notepad is part of the Windows Operating System" even though the original definition would disagree with this claim. MerlinYoda (talk) 21:28, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. --slashem (talk) 21:39, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Adding AppLogic As An Operating System

I am seeking an editor who is interesting in writing about AppLogic http://www.3tera.com/AppLogic/ and or www.3tera.com.

I am a consultant for the company, so I cannot create the content for them, but 3tera is a leader utility computing and has created a ground breaking operating system that creates a grid computer out of commodity servers and then runs complex web applications as virtualized entities. Here are a couple of media references to 3tera.com:

Linux Magazine named them one of the top 20 companies to watch in 2008 (Applogic runs programs written in Centos and Debian as virtual appliances: http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4766/2/

Here is the news section from 3tera.com: http://www.3tera.com/News/Articles.php


```` —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonah Stein (talk • contribs) 18:21, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Security

I made an edit to paragraph 6 of the security section ("While users generally find regular user accounts on Linux..."). This was to break it up into shorter sentences and make it easier to read. I tried to keep the content the same, while being more specific as to what the paragraph was referring to. I left in the reference to Vista, but I'm not sure if it works with the aims of neutrality. It might be useful in the Wikipedia page about Vista under controversy, but is it necessary to this document?

Also I feel that this section should be subtitled and divided up into internal/external security. It seems a bit unfocused as well.

Trevjs (talk) 20:54, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Boot-strapping" and "Disk access and file systems" sections are too PC-centric

The "Boot-strapping" and "Disk access/file systems" sections seem, to me at least, to be described from an overly "PC architecture" point-of-view. (In my mind, this also includes such architectures based around SPARC and DEC Alpha processors.)

The "Disk access/file systems" section does not discuss any of the database-like, record-based file systems used with various midrange and mainframe operating systems like VM/ESA, OS/400, etc.

And the "Boot-strapping" section does not discuss any midrange or mainframe IPL processes, such as the loading of CPU microcode and registers from an external source (usually via a "processor console") that is often required before such a machine has enough "brains" to boot the actual OS and get itself running.

Adams kevin 23:06, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dispute: MS Windows Security

I do not agree with the following statements:

"Microsoft Windows has been heavily criticized for many years for Window's almost total inability to protect one running program from another, however since Windows isn't generally used as a server it has been considered less of a problem."


First of all, the phrase:

"... Window's almost total inability to protect one running program from another"


does not read like a neutral statement. Granted, Windows has had many well-publicized issues, but because Windows has such a large market share on the desktop, any reported lapses in Windows' security model receives much more "front-and-center" attention from the public-at-large. All operating systems, including those based on UNIX, have had their fair share of security holes. I believe the criticism stems more from flaws in the quality of Microsoft's code, and less from flaws in the methods used. Since Windows NT, Microsoft Windows has been designed with strong process isolation in mind. The fact that most of the security holes in Windows revolve around buffer overflow exploitation indicates that Microsoft's problems are more a quality issue, and less a design issue.

And secondly, the phrase:

"... since Windows isn't generally used as a server ..."


is not accurate by any stretch. The server "flavours" of Microsoft Windows are very widely distributed and hold considerable market share.

Adams kevin 23:23, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Basic computer operation

I believe the first sentence should be tightened up; use of terms is not totally correct. I am thinking in terms of muli-purpose versus single purpose computers. "An operating system is the software component of a computer system that is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the resources of the computer." Sharing? That sentence should reflect what is true of the most basic, cheapest single purpose computer. That is the bottomline. In a single purpose operating system, such as IBM 360 PCP had in the 1970s, sharing was not an issue. Basically, the operator hung tapes, booted the system, and let it roll. It was only running one application. It used to be done with plug boards. 140.32.122.60 (talk) 14:56, 3 June 2008 (UTC) Roger12

[edit] guoey?

Ok, I am able to pronounce GUI as a word, but guoey - no chance. Whose idea was that anyway? :arny (talk) 17:31, 7 June 2008 (UTC)