OS History, part 1

Okay, this may seem as a bit too basic, but hey - there is always new stuff out there to learn.

Today's post will deal with the Operating Systems (OS) of the PC. This is the basic software that turns your PC into an actually useful pile of metal. There are many operating systems out there, but let's just stick to the most common ones:

  • Windows
  • Linux
  • Mac OS
As I have mentioned it in one of my earliest blogposts, we can cross out Mac OS off the list, as it is mostly exclusive to Apple computers. You can set up Mac OS on a PC and Windows on a Mac, but who in the right mind would do that? Anyways, these operating systems all have distributions, which means the different versions of these OS-es. Let's go through the brief history of these systems!


Windows


The first version of Windows dates back to 1985. It was a graphical "shell" for the then-standard operating system, DOS. DOS did not have a graphic interface, so you needed to type stuff in order to be successful. Interestingly, DOS kept lingering inside Windows even in the 2000's, which seems pretty old-fashioned.

The first useful version of Windows was 3.1, which was kind of different from the distributions we're using now. The whole wallpaper served as the taskbar - there was no such thing as desktop. The icons on the background were only there if that program was running.

Sheer awesomeness

This system was pretty good, I used it myself, despite my young age. It was not a huge system - you could setup it by using 8 floppy disks - and one of them was only for the printers.

The next instalment of the Windows series was Windows 95. This is where the "classic" Windows look originates from. It was not a bad OS, although it broke down way too often, and it suffered from numerous errors. The famous Blue Screen of Death was the most common in this operating system. When it occurred, the PC showed a mysterious blue screen with some text, then the system restarted upon any keystroke.

Then came Windows 98, which looked the same as Windows 95, but it was much more effective. Nevertheless, Microsoft released a Second Edition of Win 98, and that was the OS that most people used until Windows XP. However, until XP, there were more distributions of Windows. Windows Millenium was the next in the series, and... it sucked hard, end of story. Windows 2000 and Windows NT (which had its first release see daylight in '93) were more like a sidetrack to the series as they were for networking and business purposes.

And we arrived to the somewhat present, as Microsoft released Win XP in 2001. It is still one of the most used operating systems across the world, and its updated versions are among the fastest and safest operating systems. After XP, Microsoft prepared everyone for a breakthrough operating system, which was Windows Vista. It was even worse than Windows Millenium. Microsoft soon made up for this useless OS when they released Windows 7, which is a very good operating system, although I do not like it for several reasons (networking is not so good, and the system defends itself from change like it is some sort of plague).
The newest in the series is Windows 8, with its brand-new interface. It consumes less resources than Windows 7.

Nowadays, Windows users mostly choose between XP, 7, and 8. I'd recommend XP for weaker, older PCs, netbooks, and for those who are experienced in setting up a good, up-to-date OS. Windows 7 is good for everyday use, but if you are not afraid of innovation, you should use Windows 8.

Next up, we are going to take a look at Linux, and draw some conclusions, so stay tuned!

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
Return top