Talk:Operating system/Archive 3

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Archive 6

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 [1] 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)

I have not got teaching by that way, "OS does need to include the UI", because the application it self can proof the UI for other application, example OS > Xorg > Firefox. We could edit firefox and Xorg on those manners that Firefox is the GUI itself while Xorg acts as UI manager and OS just gives services for Xorg to run. User only starts the computer, what starts the OS what runs Xorg and starts firefox what is shown for user. This does not mean that UI cant be included in OS or even in the kernel (monolith) if wanted, this is teaching what I have got, everything just depends the way how the OS or Kernel OS is build. Golftheman (talk) 08:28, 17 July 2008 (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)

But the web browser or filemanager (mediaplayer) is part of OS if parts of those are integrated to same services what are OS services. Then they are not just by talkin marketing "part of OS", but part of OS by technically and then there is not false information by marketing. Isn't this what Microsoft did on first place, first they bundled the browser with OS and then they integrated the browser to part of OS services, so it was not just bundled with OS? Golftheman (talk) 08:28, 17 July 2008 (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)

But OS #1 reason is to share hardware services for applications so they can work together. most kernels (microkernels) does not include all needed services to be alone a OS, but few kernels (monolith) does include all services and those are then alone a OS. if X needs Y but Y does not need X, is the Y part of X or X part of Y, if is, then we dont have only a X or Y? Golftheman (talk) 08:28, 17 July 2008 (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)

"the OS provides an interface between applications and hardware, and the applications typically include user interfaces." This says the all what is needed. And only extra information is, the OS can include the UI itself if wanted, but it is not OS service what is wanted from software so it can be a OS. Golftheman (talk) 08:28, 17 July 2008 (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)

It is question how the system was build, was the solitaire integrated to OS services or even kernel itself? Does removing solitaire affect that you cant run any applications on the computer?

Difference is the services what the OS is. I/O, Memory management, Progress management, Filesystems, System calls etc. If you integrate the solitaire to progress management service, it is part of OS because you cant run any application without progress management. But microkernels does not include all those services in kernel, but separeted and even placed to userland. Monolith kernel runs all services alone in same address space, kernel space. And so called hybrid kernel does run some services in kernel space separeted from kernel and can run some services on the userland, still the kernel is microkernel. Micro kernel alone is not OS, but microkernel + OS services is the OS. And if you integrate applications to OS services, so application can not be removed (does not mean that application does not have uninstall feature!) without compromising the OS services, it is part of OS. We cant draw one rule what would work for all systems, what application is part of OS and what is not. It is question about how the whole system was build and we need blueprints of the OS itself until we can say by sure. Golftheman (talk) 08:28, 17 July 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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:[2] ) 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)

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)

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)

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)

A lot of the Windows part of the security section appears to be complete nonsense. E.g. "Microsoft Windows has been heavily criticized for many years for Window's inability to protect one running program from another. To remedy this, Microsoft has added limited user accounts and more secure logins in recent years" -- just doesn't make sense: An inability to protect one running program from another is an issue with memory protection, not whether or not you have user accounts. I might have a go at rewriting that whole section. -- simxp (talk) 17:10, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Done! I've moved both the Windows & Linux case studies to the bottom of the section and put them under their own headers, and completely updated and rewritten the Windows section (it now has three seperate paragraphs for Windows 9x, NT pre-Vista, and Vista). Much better, no?-- simxp (talk) 17:40, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

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

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)

Shouldn't this page be renamed to "operating system (personal computer)" of something similar?

My view is operating system is a very loose term, and this page looks highly biased towards modern PC operating systems. Please look at the list of operating systems on Wikipedia and consider if the definition on this page is really correct. For example I consider MS-DOS to be an operating system, just because it doesn't have every feature of unix doesn't mean it's not an operating system, whereas this page describes it as 'having some of the features an operating system has'. What else do you call software that implements drivers for hardware, memory management, device drivers, filesystems etc?

Please consider how the term operating system was commonly used in the 80s, for example Acorn's "Machine Operating System". I don't think operating system implies multitasking or multiuser. If I put a microcontroller on a PCB with various hardware peripherals, those hardware peripherals need code to operate them. If you end up with code to write to a display, to handle and buffer serial and network communications, to debounce push button presses, to have timers capable of both keeping track of time and periodic execution of code, to reprogram flash memory etc... then I would say at some point it ceases to be just a bunch of library functions and becomes an operating system. Maybe not a typical operating system like what 99% of people imagine, but still an operating system. Just because an amoeba doesn't do everything a mammal can do, doesn't mean it's not a living organism.

Also, if you take Linux as an example, what do you actually class as the operating system? You have the kernel, the dynamic libraries, and the GNU utilities such as /bin/sh or /bin/ls. I think the answer is "operating system is a loose term". 92.237.44.248 (talk) 00:43, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

reference, please?

Could the author, please, give the reference to the text Windows XP, the most widespread operating system on desktop computing today (underneath the first figure)?

Sincer thanks, Anete —Preceding unsigned comment added by Savegnosis (talk • contribs) 08:25, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

History and MS-DOS

Isn't MS-DOS mentioned a bit early (and totally out of context)? 87.59.232.179 (talk) 18:33, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. - Josh (talk | contribs) 18:59, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

features of operating systems as personal level,work group ,enterprise

discuss about fetures of O.S. at diffrent levels —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.180.195.213 (talk) 18:36, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Discussion about Gnome (Ubuntu) Screenshot on "Unix and Unix-like Operating Systems" part

You have not had a Linux screenshot on that article, only a screenshot of software system what runs because the Linux operating system. Screenshot of a Gnome or any other desktop environment/window manager is not screenshot of the Linux operating system. That part of article is about a Unix and Unix-variants Operating Systems, not about a Linux distributions or their promotion. Those informations place is on the Linux article, or distribution specific articles if it's the information like Ubuntu screenshots. Not to a article what is only about a different Operating Systems, not for complete software systems. Answers for ten (10) questions.

1. Is Gnome or any other Desktop Environment/Window Manager part of Linux?
2. Is a screenshot of the Ubuntu default desktop a screenshot of Linux or a screenshot of Gnome what has a Canonical's made theme and wallpaper applied on it?
3. Is Ubuntu different Operating System than Linux?
4. Is market selling information, like Dell selling Ubuntu with it's computers, a important information when finding out about what kind different Unix and Unix-like Operating Systems exists?
5. What would you do if someone would add a screenshot of Mozilla Firefox with Microsoft site opened on it while Firefox is on full screen mode to Ubuntu article, saying it is screenshot of Ubuntu. And everytime someone removes it by reason that it does not show the Ubuntu at all but just a Mozilla Firefox with page opened, it gets added back there by reason Firefox is running on Ubuntu and because it comes with Ubuntu and so on is part of Ubuntu, it shows what kind Ubuntu is?
6. If you really want to have a screenshot on Unix and Unix-like operating system, why the screenshot is from Ubuntu and not from a default Gnome or KDE desktop environment, those what can be run on many of Unix or Unix-like operating systems, why the reason to have _ubuntu_ there?
7. If keeping that article with information what does not belong there, why that information must be biased for Ubuntu?
8. Because the wrong (!= false) information there is liked to keep, it is so biased against all other corporations, communities of distributions because it does not include information (what I have added now btw) about them, it leads that same kind information should be added there everytime when corporation takes one of Linux distribution to their collection. Why those informations should not be added to article and make it even bigger?
9. Why not help cleaning up the article, by removing the screenshots of only the applications/software systems what are running because the Operating System is making it possible beneath them. Removing the wrong information from article what gives same reason to others to add more wrong information to the article what does not belong there, because there already exist ones?
10. Is the meaning of "Operting Systems" article to tell about Operating Systems, or is it's meaning to tell Operating Systems and all kind software systems what are build top of them and all variants of those with information of those marketing and market share. So in the end we have information from dozens of articles in this single one, where those doesn't belong?

Golftheman (talk) 20:52, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

> "Screenshot of a Gnome or any other desktop environment/window manager is not screenshot of the Linux operating system"

And what would you say qualifies for a screenshot of "the Linux operating system"? Linux is a kernel, not an operating system. You can't have a screenshot of a kernel. It's a contradiction in terms. The best you can do is have a screenshot of an operating system which uses Linux as its kernel. Ubuntu qualifies perfectly well.

> "That part of article is about a Unix and Unix-variants Operating Systems, not about Linux distributions"

Linux distributions are examples of Unix-varient operating systems.

-- simxp (talk) 11:14, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Linux is THE operating system. Do not believe that Linux is microkernel and not a monolith kernel. There is difference. Kernel can be a operating system alone if it includes all operating system services alone, what monolith kernels does. That is the current problem that people hear that "Operating system needs a kernel" so it fits to every kernel, it is not matter is it monolith or microkernel. This "Linux is just a kernel not an operating system" is biggest problem on whole operating system science because those who believe it, does not understand what is difference of kernel arcitechtures. Other question for you (you should answer for all 10 btw), if Gnome needs Operating System to work, how it can be a part of Operating System? A Operating System can not need a Operating System to work. The Gnome is not part of any operating system, especially a Linux, unless it is embedded to it! What if I remove Gnome from Ubuntu, dont I have anymore a Operating System but just a kernel and punch of libraries? That I'm running Gnome, is same as I'm running World of Warcraft on Windows Vista. It makes new software GUI for computer, and without people knowing it is a game, they would believe it is new Operating System. I repeat, Linux is the operating system kernel, not a kernel of the operating system. When you study computer science, you learn from operating system lessons that Linux is alone a operating system, and it is the reason why Linux is so big success. It would not be if it would be just a microkernel. Golftheman (talk) 19:47, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Seeing as Linus Torvalds himself is happy to refer to a computer running the Linux kernel + a bunch of graphical stuff as "Linux", this isn't as clear-cut as you're making out. The point is that the term "operating system" simply isn't as definitive as it was twenty years ago, and that a screenshot of GNOME on Ubuntu is a perfectly acceptable "screenshot of Linux" to most people, computer scientists or otherwise. To refrain from referring to it as such is misdirected pedantry, and it's not going to happen. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 20:02, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Ain't you using a Linux when you use Gnome or any other application? I dont know about you but I am. When I use Ubuntu, I use Linux operating system, not Ubuntu operating system. I use software system what includes operating system called Linux. The screenshot of Gnome desktop with Ubuntu theme, is just operating system running Xorg what allows Gnome to run etc. Is it truth if 80% US citizens does believe Mombasa is in Australia, so there is reason to edit to be so on wikipedia article about Mombasa or about Australia? Currently that Unix and Unix-like operatins systems article part is biased with false information towards Ubuntu. I tought this article was about computer science but it seems it full of Ubuntu users who believe what marketing tells them, ignoring the science and praising the Ubuntu as operating system. The operating system term is still the same as 17 years ago, it has not changed, only thing has changed that software systems what comes on CD's when you install a Ubuntu, includes lots of other softwares than just a operating system. No one does anything just with the operating system, user needs applications to get work done, but they need operating system to run those applications. As long you cant proof that Linux is not a monolith kernel and computer science does not apply to it, that chapter of article is very abused in current state with Ubuntu screenshot. 213.130.236.207 (talk) 21:23, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

This is a minority position. The current consensus is basically that "operating system" means whatever vendors say it means. There's no consensus to remove screenshots from articles based on your personal interpretation of where the line is between an OS and a distribution. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 21:55, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

You actually just told that a Science does not matter when talking about the Operating Systems but the public opinion of users, what they believe what is Operating System and what is based to information what marketing gives them, is the correct one. As I said, this chapter of the article is very biased for a Ubuntu, and it looks it will stay so as long the science does not matter, but the "whatever vendors say it means" opinion of it's upkeepers. I gave a ten simple questions, hopefully someone really reads them and think for what they ask. But I doubt it. Golftheman (talk) 23:21, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I am having trouble comprehending exactly what you're objecting to at this stage, and your questions don't help. The section is on Unix and Unix-like operating systems. There is not the slightest question that Ubuntu is, indeed, a Unix-like operating system. Thus it serves as an example. The inclusion of it as an example doesn't make the section "biased towards Ubuntu", except in the unavoidable sense, which would be the same for any other choice of example. -- simxp (talk) 00:44, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

actually they help, if you read them and you answer to them. Because Linux is the operating system, softwares what you install to it, does not belong to Linux at all. Those Linux + Applications does not make a operating system but a software system, bigger package. Ubuntu use Linux, so does Fedora and Mandriva. They ain't different operating systems, but different software systems. The article is about operating system's not about software systems. Unless someone of you can proof that Ubuntu use a microkernel, the Linux is the operating system, so it's wrong to call Ubuntu as different Operating System as Linux (question 3). Thats why it's biased for Ubuntu, because the article gives false information that Ubuntu is different operating system than Linux. The screenshot of Ubuntu desktop, is just a screenshot of software what runs top of Xorg, what runs top of other softwares and all nees a operating system, what is Linux because it is monolith kernel. The whole thing would be different, if Linux would be a microkernel. But still then Xorg and Gnome should be needed to be bundled to operating system services until it can be part of operating syste, as long it is not, it's just a screenshot of application runnin on Linux operating system and spreads false information and is Ubuntu biased. Many Ubuntu users believe marketing and not science. They believe that they have different operating system than Linux because it's from Canonical. They believe it's somekind special operating system what is very easy to use. The Ubuntu etc part of it is just a marketing and has nothing to do with the operating system what is computer science. Seems that no one even wants to answer for 10 questions, but just trying to explain why Ubuntu screenshot should be there by using marketing talk, not explainig it by using computer science (question 5 is happening here, the screenshot is wanted to keep, even it is against science).Golftheman (talk) 13:06, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Today, the term "operating system" basically means what you consider the operating system, plus the rest of that software package. It is like a car. The air conditioner does not make it a car, but if the car has an air conditioner, than it is part of the car. Here are my answers to your questions.

1. "Linux" is a name often used for any operating system that uses Linux as its kernel, including Ubuntu. Gnome is part that Linux.
2. Still using Linux as a name for Ubuntu, yes it is a screenshot of Linux (as well as screenshot of Gnome).
3. Ubuntu is different than the Linux kernel by itself. Again, Linux is also a name for Ubuntu, so Ubuntu and that Linux are not different operating systems.
4. No, it is not important to find out what different Unix and Unix-like operating systems exist, but who says that section is only about what exists?
5. I would remove it, because it does not show a very important part of Ubuntu. This is different from this case, where the screenshot shows what Ubuntu, a Unix-like operating system, looks like when it is booted.
6. Because that wouldn't show any real world operating system, just some software we put together ourselves (original research). Ubuntu is a real world operating system.
7. No, it is not biased.
8. I don't know about that one.
9. Because the screenshot is of the operating system, Ubuntu.
10. To tell about operating systems.

Now I have a question for you: Why should we accept what you consider an operating system (an English term), when you use the English language so improperly? - Josh (talk | contribs) 15:41, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree with most of what Josh said. And let me put all of this in more precise words:

1. We are arguing about a word definition. This can be considered a waste of time.
2. Since most people define an OS as more than just a kernel, the onus is on you to prove that there is a consensus in the computer science community that kernel == OS.

So let me make the most important question of all. The question that can finish all this debate:

Why are you so sure that there is a consensus among computer scientists that OS == kernel? What are your sources? -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 21:09, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

The kernel is not _always_ a whole OS. The OS can be a monolith or it can be sliced to smaller parts like on microkernel arcitechture. Monolith kernel includes all OS parts (Monolith kernel == Operating System). Microkernel does not, but other OS parts are moved to userland as OS servers among other process (Microkernel + OS Servers == Operating System). http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0130313580/ref=sib_dp_pt/103-7158569-1619062#reader-link and http://www.usenix.org/publications/login/2006-04/openpdfs/herder.pdf and http://www.computer.org/portal/site/computer/menuitem.5d61c1d591162e4b0ef1bd108bcd45f3/index.jsp?&pName=computer_level1_article&TheCat=1005&path=computer/homepage/0506&file=cover1.xml&xsl=article.xsl& and at least but to give you a _point_ http://www.topology.org/human/?a=/linux/lingl.html To referr first link for those who does not have time or patience to read all those... there reads: "On top of the operating system is the rest of the system sofware. Here we find the command interpreter (shell), compilers, editors and similar application-independent programs. It is important to realize that these programs are definitely not part of the operating system, even though they are typically supplied by the computer manifacturer. This is crucial, but subtle, point. The Operating system is that portion of the sofware that runs in kernel mode or supervisor mode. It is protected from user tampering by the hardware (ignoring for the moment some of the older microprocessors that do not have hardware protection at all). Compilers and editors run in user mode. If a user does not like a particular compiler, he is free to write his own if he so chooses; he is not free to write his own disk interrupt handler, which is part of the operating system and is normally protected by hardware against attempts by users to modify it. Finaly, above the system programs come the application programs. These programs are written by the users to solve their particular problems, such as commercial data processing, engineering calcurations, or game playing." And it seems that you have never actually understanded the OS can be related to kernel. In the PDF link there reads such as: "In particular, the early designers’ goal of putting speed above all else led to monolithic designs with the entire operating system running as a single binary program in kernel mode." If you still pretend that screenshot of Ubuntu desktop is screenshot of OS, you are spreading misinformation. The Operating System is very important piece of software in whole software system, what comes in Ubuntu. Screenshot of Ubuntu is screenshot of _Ubuntu_ but not a screenshot of _Operating System_. Because Ubuntu _use_ Linux Operating System. Ubuntu _includes_ the _Linux Operating System_. Ubuntu is not different Operating System than Linux, it is more than Operating System. Ubuntu Includes System programs (Linux OS + GNU developing tools, Xorg etc) and Application programs (Gnome, KDE, Firefox, OpenOffice, Amarok). So long as the article claims that Ubuntu is different operating system than Linux and includes a screenshot of Gnome with Canonical made theme, it is biased totally for Ubuntu by Ubuntu users pretending to have something what they dont have, a better operating system than other Linux users! So be a abuser and continue claiming that Ubuntu is "real world OS" what it just is not and continue believing that screenshot of Ubuntu is screenshot of OS, while it is just a screenshot of _Ubuntu_ and not from Operating System Golftheman (talk) 13:03, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

So if I remove the Gnome from Ubuntu, I dont have anymore a working operating system = I cant run anykind application, I cant access to network or I cant use any devices. If I can, Gnome is not a part of operating system. If you go to computer science lessons, you learn that kernel is very important part of operating system. It rules what kind is operating system arcitechture. The operating system and software system "border" is not written to stone, it is just list what software needs to do until it can be called as operating system: Boot-strapping, Program Execution, Interrupts, Security, Memory management, Virtual Memory, Multitasking, Filesystems, Drivers, Networking. Linux does everything what is needed from software to be a operating system. You dont need Gnome to do those. You dont need browser or mediaplayer for those. Microkernel can not do such things alone. Find a serious operating system book and you learn that Linux is actually the operating system. But Linux can be edited so it is not anymore a operating system, just like on Google's android. Google removed the I/O services from Linux and replaced the own one outside of Linux, so Linux changed to be only a kernel. But still applications, interface and other parts does not belong to operating system on Android either. Gnome is just a _application_ (own software system to be a correct) what needs a operating system to be working. So how a operating system part can need a operating system to work? And do not make those stupid (car) analogies, if people can not talk about subject with it self but need to use analogies, the whole discussion is already lost it's meaning. And I'm very sorry about my english, it's just my fourth language and third worst of all, so please, do not believe being right because I dont write such good english. Operating system is between hardware and applications. All what you see on the Ubuntu screenshot, are applications and other files (wallpaper, icons etc) and all those needs a operating system, they do not belong to operating system. The article is still very biased when it's information is based to marketing and not to computer science. Mayby I should say, because most computer science books explains why the Linux kernel is the operating system, you must proof that Linux is just a kernel. But do remember, I dont say, and science books either, that kernel is _always_ a operating system, that always depends what kind a kernel it is. But mayby it is so, that the science is wrong and the marketing is right, because seems that what non-technical people believe, is the truth of operating systems definition. So I let this discussion to end from my part here because of it. Golftheman (talk) 16:03, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

And who exactly said Linux was a microkernel? --arny (talk) 14:28, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

All those who say that Gnome is part of operating system. Or Linux is just a kernel. Gnome is not part of operating system, because it is just like a normal application what runs outside of operating system. You can take screenshots of Gnome, KDE and XFCE but those ain't screenshots of operating system, just a screenshot of Desttop enviroments what can be run on multiple different operating systems too than just a Linux, like on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Everytime someone says that Linux is just a kernel and operating system parts are like Gnome or Firefox, they speak with believe that Linux is just a microkernel. They speak against computer science. Only proof what they have is marketing, not science. It is very easy to believe what your eyes sees, but in science it is not about it. Many Ubuntu users really believe that because Microsoft own operating system included a window manager and the desktop was part of operating system, the desktop is part of operating system too on other operating systems. Operating system definition has not changed in time. In computer science there is no questions about operating system definition, it is very simple, memory management, process management, network protocols, filesystems etc. Problem is just how do you implent those services and it's always about kernel structure, is it a microkernel or is it a monolith kernel. Current way to do operating systems is to use microkernel and implent all other needed services outside of kernel and kernel space to user space. While there is these monolith kernels what includes all services inside a kernel what is alone in kernel space like mickrokernel. The screenshot on that article is not showing Operating System, it is showing just a Application (Gnome) with someones (Canonical) maded theme (Human) on it. I can make exact copy of Ubuntu desktop with openSolaris, with exact same applications, exact themes and styles so not even the Ubuntu user cant find out it is not a Ubuntu. Then I could post that screenshot here to openSolaris article showing it's screenshot of openSolaris operating system. All Ubuntu fanboys would attack against it by saying it is screenshot of Ubuntu. To find out what operating system you are running, type uname to commandline. The Ubuntu screenshot on that part of article, is just biased for Ubuntu and Gnome. It does not show operating system, only a desktop environment and it should not be there. Golftheman (talk) 12:35, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Evidently inconsistent. I can run Windows without explorer.exe, and I can run explorer.exe on Linux. Does this mean it's impossible to take a screenshot of Windows? You're using obsolete definitions and clinging to advertising conspiracies. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 13:13, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh please buy or borrow few serious computer science books about operating systems. For example, "Modern operating systems" what is written by Andrew S.Tanenbaum (yes it is old but still valid. Science has not changed it's definitions!). This wikipedia article part is badly biased for Ubuntu, and seems to be protected by ubuntu users who does not even understand what is science and what is logical and why _we have_ exact definitions for things like operating system. That screenshot of Ubuntu is not screenshot of operating system, it is just a screenshot of application, what is running top of operating system. You all seems to be protecting the false believing what is based only to marketing, not to science and technology. Golftheman (talk) 23:56, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

At this stage you're essentially just repeating what you've said previously, despite many people having tried to explain why we have the screenshot we do. So how about this. Instead of debating hypotheticals, I'll give you a practical choice: as Amy points out below, what I said earlier was wrong -- you can actually take a screenshot of the kernel, or at least something the kernel has output -- and I have in fact located such a picture on Wikipedia: a kernel panic. Now, which one do you think best illustrates "Unix and Unix-like operating system"? A modern Linux distro such as Ubuntu... Or a kernel panic? -- simxp (talk) 04:26, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

It's Arny, not Amy, thanks for asking ;) :D --arny (talk) 00:48, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

(By the way, in case it wasn't completely clear, that was a rhetorical question; if you actually do choose "kernel panic" and try to replace the Ubuntu image with that, you will get reverted...) -- simxp (talk) 04:31, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

The kernel Panic illustrates better the operating system. Because it shows more information of the operating itself than screenshot of Gnome what is not part of Operating System. But I would not place the screenshot of kernel panic to that article, but screenshot where operating system starts the INIT. You all seems to be really believing that Gnome is part of Operating System. It is not, it is just a application what needs a operating system and other applications to work. The screenshot of Ubuntu in that article is just biased for Ubuntu. To make this in simple way. 1) Linux is a Operating System. 2) Ubuntu is not different operating system than Linux 3) Ubuntu is more than just a Operating System, it is complete software system what includes applications, libraries, system programs and the operating system, Linux itself. 4) Thats why we have definition "Distribution" what is for software systems. Not for Operating systems. Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora and Debian are all same operating systems, but different software systems. They all includes same operating system, just different collection preinstalled applications. 6) Ubuntu use desktop environment called Gnome. It is not part of operating system at all even it is used in Ubuntu to draw a graphical desktop. The article is about operating systems, not about applications what needs a operating system to work. The screenshot of Ubuntu in the article, just shows the application called Gnome what is themed with Canonicals theme, not operating system. Without operating system, Gnome doesn't work at all. Without Gnome the Operating System works just like with Gnome, because Gnome ain't part of Operating System. You should really understand first what is operating system, but it looks like none of you who defends the screenshot on the article, understand the science and reasons. You defend the false believe what marketing gives. You should study the operating system science, then you would understand right away that Ubuntu screenshot there is not right. But you dont need to even study the operating systems, it might be enough that you can read introduction of this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0130313580/ref=sib_dp_pt/103-7158569-1619062#reader-link But to really understand that text, you should get that book and read it trought. And get other operating system books too and read them to understand the computer science. Then you would notice that what you say, is totally wrong. That screenshot is rightfully there as would be screenshot of World of Warcraft. WoW is application just like a Gnome, but designed for different purpose. Either of them are part of Operating System. This article is just totally biased for Ubuntu for marketing purpose and spreading false information against science, truth and logic. But it just seems to be so because this is Wikipedia, where all people can write about computer science actually without knowing it. Thats why if really wants to get real information of operating systems, people needs to go to library and borrow books from operating systems designing etc. If they read this wikipedia article and then they read the computer science books, they found them very confilctin each other. Problem is that wich one to trust, wikipedia or all computer science books of desiging operating systems what tells exactly how to code own and how they are constructed. You can keep the screenshot of the Ubuntu there, it is nothing more than proof that this article is protected by Ubuntu fanboys who does not even understand computer science and who are very eagerly ready to replace it with marketing and fanboyism. Golftheman (talk) 16:52, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

But, if you make a screenshot showing transition from kernel-only operation to init working its chores, you actually did make a true screenshot of Ubuntu. Or any other Unix-like. --arny (talk) 00:51, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

No it would not. Because Linux starting INIT would be screenshot of _operating system_ starting the INIT application. While screenshot of Ubuntu is just a screenshot of Gnome without anything showing from the Operating System. Ubuntu screenshot is not screenshot of operating system. Unless you can proof that Gnome is bundled to Linux on Ubuntu. What is impossible because it is not. Gnome is application like Firefox on Ubuntu, it is not part of Operating System at all, but both those are part of software system, like Operating System is too. I am going to remove the Ubuntu screenshot and market data from the article part unless you can not proof that Gnome is part of Operating system and not just software part of Software System. You should understand that Linux (the monolith kernel) is the operating system. Get few computer science books about Operating Systems and you understand that Gnome is part of Operating System and so on screenshot of it on Operating System article is false. There could be a screenshot of Gnome on somewhere of the article, on context "Gnome desktop environment works on multiple different Operating Systems like Linux, OpenBSD and FreeBSD".

You CAN make a screenshot of a kernel. In Linux, for example, everything you see until init kicks in is being printed by the kernel alone :) --arny (talk) 14:28, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

AFAIK the Linux kernel abstracts the access to the monitor/graphic cards. So technically everything that's shown on the screen while running a Linux kernel is output from the kernel. If it's information about the kernel itself or information (requests) from applications is irrelevant if we're just talking definitions. Allowing applications access to the monitor is an important feature of a desktop OS that would make sense to showcase as a screenshot. ;p. That said, an example of a distribution running on top of GNU/Linux would be more accurate - and an image showing the architecture of the kernel might make more sense. And yes, I know this discussion isn't really relevant anymore. 85.226.59.234 (talk) 21:25, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Image issue

That image at the top of the article is somewhat inaccurate. It should go "application->operating system->hardware->user", because the user is interfacing with the hardware to communicate change to the applications. Theta4 (talk) 19:26, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

That is one way to say it, but the "User > Application > Operating System > Hardware" direction is the way how you "see" the function. Actually it would need to be a loop ring. Example, first user moves the mouse (hardware) > OS reads the input, sends the output for application what directes it for other applications and those can show the mouse cursor moving, while user moves the mouse by information what gets from screen. Then if user clicks the mouse, the direction goes again User > Hardware > OS > Application > Application > User. But the idea is just to show the software system as layers. The Operating System needs a Hardware to run, it is "top" of HW. The Operating System structure is monolith kernel or microkernel+OS servers and top of OS is running the other applications, libraries etc, all the other system software. And users use all the others system softwares to do their specific tasks, and those applications use the OS what execute the tasks in the Hardware. And this is the viewpoint of the normal user, who does relay the information on the screen. So that diagram should then be "User > Hardware > OS > Application > Application > OS > Hardware > User" what makes it bretty wierd, because the hardware can be a monitor (output), a printer, a game controller what has forcefeedback... The diagram should be just a very simple to show the user information that Operating System is not what they use, but applications. Applications what draws command line UI, Graphical UI or browser etc. Purpose of OS is just to be between applications and hardware and allow applications to work and get read/write information from/to hardware (filesystems, memory, processor, printers, monitors etc). Golftheman (talk) 11:57, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Non-Unix operating systems: do any exist?

With all the talk of Unix-like operating sytems, do any exist that aren't based on Unix? If not then the distinction seems kind of meaningless in general to me. ʄ!•¿talk? 03:09, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

There are UNIX and Unix-like Operating Systems. UNIX is one of the first Operating Systems what exist... first they were open and universities could study and modified them. But then they got closed and there became commercial UNIX. UNIX is not actually a Operating System, it is bunch of Operating Systems. UNIX is just a "standard" how the things should go and now if you want your OS to be a UNIX, you need to pay for licensing it. And you need to tweak your OS to be a compatible with UNIX until you can buy it. Linux (the kernel) is Unix-like Operating System. It has the Unix filesystem structure and many ideas of UNIX OS's. GNU is trying to get their own Unix-like OS work. GNU name comes "GNU is Not a UNIX", because GNU wants to be a Unix-like OS with freedom. But problem is that GNU has not got their own OS work, because their own microkernel does not work yet. So they need to use Linux Operating System to run their software. GNU is developing the Hurd microkernel so they would get rid of Linux OS (monolith kernel). In the old UNIX times, the Operating System was a monolith... because you only had 64k letter memory for OS. So the OS was very small and easy to maintain in these times. But when the memory got bigger and bigger what OS could use, the Monolith OS growed too much, so you ended to have OS what no one could maintain alone, like now Linux has over 2.5 million lines of code, Windows NT5.1 has over 4 million lines of code while the whole Windows XP system has over 40 million lines of code and who knows how many lines of code is on other software systems like Ubuntu, Debian and Mandriva etc mayby a hundreds of millions of code. Then there came new idea to build very modular OS, by using microkernel structure, where the kernel is alone in kernel space, and all other OS parts in userland as servers. The microkernel can be very small when compared to monolith kernel, like Minix3 microkernel size is just over 4000 lines of code. The OS servers in userland runs in protected process mode and applications takes the connection to these and then OS servers does their tasks what application wants. The OS can be UNIX or Unix-like without this OS structure being a monolith kernel or microkernel, but the idea is for all UNIX or Unix-like OS's is that OS handles everything in very specific(basic?) way, so they can be very stable and secure, and by using these basic ideas, you can grow the OS to handle multiple users, multiple computers and multiple applications, being a secure all the time. Now the problem is that you need to pay money (was it 100 000 dollars) to get the UNIX brand. Apple did this with Leopard, they modified the Darwin OS so they got pass the qualifications and they paid about it. And Tiger, what had Unix-like OS, became UNIX OS in Leopard. The UNIX and Unix-like terms can not be joined or forgetten, because both has valid things. And there is lots of non-UNIX or non-Unix-like Operating Systems, example of Windows NT (XP= NT5.1, Vista= NT6, Windows 7= NT7), MinWin (Mayby a Windows 8), Singularity (MS test OS), Windows CE (Windows Mobile etc), Symbian etc etc.. Golftheman (talk) 12:15, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

User interacts with hardware

The picture "Operating system placement.svg" illustrating the Operating System page is all wrong and should be corrected. The order of of components should be: 1. User 2. Hardware 3. Operating System 4. Application —Preceding unsigned comment added by Karolinski (talk • contribs) 01:47, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

lmm..m. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.28.151.190 (talk) 13:13, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The meaning of "hardware" in this case is communication with the actual chip/firmware controlling the device. While you can argue that the user controls some of the hardware (input devices) this is just a really small part of the hardware - the user doesn't exactly open up their computer and manually move their hard disk's head and turn the platter. The image is greatly simplified - you can't really represent the complexities of a computer as a one-dimensional layered structure. Also "User" in this case probably means "the input that the computer gets" rather than an actual human being. 85.226.59.234 (talk) 23:58, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the answer, but IMHO the term "User" in the image is incorrect. It should read "User input" or something like this, so nobody find herself wondering if "User" is or not a human being. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.20.106.127 (talk) 11:28, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Non US Operating Systems

In the section on mainframes the operating systems not invented in the USA are omitted. I have in particular mind the George series of operating systems, from ICL in the 50's, 60's and after, although it could be argued that Colossus had an operating system and Orion certainly did. There are several others.

As a result of these omissions, several 'firsts' are in error.

Furthermore, if the operating systems in use in the early days of computing are taken into account, the definitions of an operating system in the article and it's function begin to look decidedly peculiar.

For example; one could argue (and one certainly did!) that the early versions of OS 360 had a basis in the absolute demand by both the US and the UK secret organisations that the user should be unable to use the machine to encrypt or decrypt any information. So one of their paramount purposes was to conceal certain facilites from the user.

And, whilst multiprogramming (sort of multi-threading) was routinely available in 1965 as part of the hardware, sub-programming (using more than one thread to implement a real time on line function (data acquisition from analogue transducers on a missile, for example)) and overlays (overwriting code with other code during the exection of a program) were implemented by individual programmers as the need arose, within the program executing in the Central Processor.

Readers might be interested to know that disc caching was not entirely popular due to the low reliability of the 6Mbit discs then in popular use.

PS, yes my computer room was in the Science museum as some sort of ancient artifact. Don't I feel old.

Drg40 (talk) 17:43, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Non-computer OS's

Strangely enough, the article does not describe operating systems for other devices than computers. For example robots can have a operating system (eg Robotic Operating System, Dave's ROS, ...). Also, domestic appliances (eg dish washer, clothes washer, ...) and digital media players/digital audio players can have OS's. An example is Rockbox. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.176.6.252 (talk) 07:16, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

This article seems to lack focus. A short article about what an OS's major functions without the fluff would be better. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.243.172.245 (talk) 07:10, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Embedded OSes: introduction correct?

The article's first paragraph states:

Some of the oldest models may however use an embedded operating system, that may be contained on a compact disk or other data storage device.

• Embedded OSes are not only used in older 'models'; whether a device runs an embedded OS or some other type of operating system depends on its function and its hardware capabilities.
• The second part, "that [=embedded OS] may be contained on a compact disk or other data storage device", is a tautology and somewhat misleading: almost all (persitent) data is stored on some data storage device; embedded OSes are more often stored in (programmable) ROM or on a (sollid state) disk than on compact disk, since many devices running an embedded OS don't have a cdrom reader.

Can someone verify my claims and correct the article if needed? At the moment, I don't know how to phrase this information well.--Kasper van den Berg 212.238.240.80 (talk) 18:31, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

TYPES OF KERNELS IN EMBEDDED SYSTEM

TELL ME IN DETAILS —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.225.78.130 (talk) 08:42, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Why is this article considered too long?

I'm curious as to why this tag is attached to this article: It may be too long. Some content may need to be summarized or split. I don't understand why length-limits need to be applied to articles. To what end are such restrictions useful? To my way of thinking the more information an article contains within itself the more beneficial it is to me in that I don't have to spend a lot of time clicking through to other separate articles. I may be way off-base on this but then I'm often described by those close to me as too simple for today's complex world.

Public Menace (talk) 22:47, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

The general explanation is at Wikipedia:Article length. It makes sense to split an article when doing so allows the original article to focus on a high-level explanation of the topic. Whether this is the case here, I don't know. Dcoetzee 22:58, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

The length of the topic is never a concern as long as it provides you the appropriate information. For the current item(Operating System), a lengthy explanation is required. -- VVS Jones

Never say never. An article that is a stub or starter article can be any length of words, but not for any length of time. Time counts. Undeveloped articles are deleted after many years. Size is an important aesthetic for computer viewing, if only for the way the side scrollbar looks and behaves. Learning is improved at some optimal bite-size of the material to be digested. Brain storming causes floods. Dam! Get out the hydroelectrics to cut the fog.

Could we get this B-class article to around 5000 words? Currently it is twice that. Certainly! Read the article, find the redundancies (and eliminate them), rely more on the linked articles, and make more lucid the remainder! We certainly also could make space for the missing factual information (implied by B-Class grade). Filling that in would help our English version of Operating System article meet the next grade: GA-class.

By 2010, we might catch up to the German version. They have already moved our section 3 "Examples" to another article "List of Operating Systems". The French have already turned there "Examples" section into a table. Does that count? CpiralCpiral 02:47, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

The article may be too long because too much space is devoted to API's. Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 22:56, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

"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)

Can anybody describe to me the similarity between the early PC boot strap subroutine, and the boot (utility) clip used in early versions of the CBM 1540/1541 and CBM 4040 disk drives? I am more familiar with the CBM way of doing things, and am much too timid a programmer to think of trying my hand on a PC compatible running DOS. I naturally assume that the PC compatible attempted to borrow from the concept of a boot clip, than the other way around. Naturally, market dynamics eventually led in time to a strange reversal. Did a PC boot "strap" ground a couple of I/O lines like the utility clip did on a Commodore drive from 1977 or 1978? Which came first? The boot clip, or the boot strap? Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 07:35, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

How about posting the typical source code (whatever it may have been) for the PC boot strap subroutine, and the code for detecting a Commodore 4040 and 1540 boot clip? Boot clips were used when they were still developing their DOS, and they wanted to make sure that the sectors were being read in. I'm not sure how the PC boot strap subroutine worked. Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 21:04, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

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)

"For one, I've never heard of Desktop OS and when I search google, nothing pops up right away." The "Desktop OS" does not referr to any real OS. It just referss to OS's for what has software developed to draw a desktop like UI. Like Linux is Desktop OS because it has support for Xorg and you get Gnome and KDE for it. Even that Linux OS itself does not have Graphical system at all. Windows NT5.1 had graphical subsystem in OS but on NT6 it was removed from OS to own process, what brought more security and stableness. You said that "This Desktop OS actually has a pie slice"... I cant see it at all. We could have "Desktop OS" slice on diagram what shows the different OS's. Like "Server OS" and "Desktop OS". You cant find "Server OS" either, but you can find out that Windows NT6.1, NT5.2, Linux etc are so called "Server OS's". Because those are designed to run better in server environment. Golftheman (talk) 12:34, 21 October 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)

The most common operating systems today are those found in automobiles (as engine management systems), and cellphones. And I am not even mentioning the complex systems in place to regulate automobile traffic on public streets. Whoever came up with that diagram must not have heard of automobiles or cellphones. While I am not a deletionist, the diagram should nevertheless be deleted as unreliable, misleading, or just plain false. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dexter Nextnumber (talk • contribs) 21:08, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Operating System Definition

Operating System (OS) is one of the main components in today's device world. Every digital electronic device requires an OS to operate, control and manage the resources. These resources could be in the form of Hardware like Processor, Memory, keyboard, mouse, and printer or could be in the form of Software like Browser, Spreadsheets and databases. An OS is required for using mobile phone, super computer, PC, Laptop or even a car's board computer. The main function for every OS is same and that is managing resources. There are four main types of resources an OS have to control. They are components use for Processing, storage, Input and output of information. I would like to suggest a more generalize form of definition of OS instead pointing it to only Computers.Nsaquib (talk) 11:42, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Not all devices need a OS to run, it can be just a small program stored to ROM what controles the whole device, like microwave-machines or analg cameras. OS is required when the hardware beneath can change, actions what hardware does are needed to change or other applications can change top of operating system, so the software what acts as host for these both sides, it is the operating system. But if hardware does not change and it does always just few small things same way. And software does not change or it does not do anykind specific changes it self, why it exist, the software system might not include operating system. Example, I can modify mozilla firefox so it "speaks" directly to hardware so I dont need any other software to run it on the x86 computer, it is not operating system, even that it does run widgets or other web applications. Only devices what are getting changes or they need to do different task by upgrading or adding other things to them, usually needs operating system. It is not easy to understand what is operating system and what is not, if not studying it or actually finding out what software needs to do until it can be called as operating system. Thats' why it is science. It is "easy" to build circuit board and get it to do something, but when demans from this machine grows, the software or hardware might be needed to come more complex and it is easier to do software more complex than trying to do hardware what works in every situation what usage demands. And this was then reason to make a operating system what allows easy working environment for harware makers and for software makers, because they didn't need to work together to solve every problem and situation in both sides, but the middle software part was taking care for both sides. It is possible to use operating system to do simple task, what could be done just with simple firmware, but it is impossible to use simple firmware to do same task as operating system makes possible. So just that device blinks lights and has a LCD screen showing some information, does not mean it has operating system Golftheman (talk) 08:49, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

One of your criteria - that an OS is required when the hardware beneath can change - confuses openness of access (which depends on privilege and confidentiality) with the closedness of a platform that is truly closed, and therefore immutable. Lots of microwave ovens - like cellphones and automobiles - can be expanded and changed, if you have access to the fully commented source code that was used to assemble the operating system. Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 21:14, 22 November 2009 (UTC)]

You don't mean an OS, you mean either finite state-machine or microcontroller (μC). They are the least that is required for all electronic system resource management. An OS in this articulation is for general purpose microprocessors, those with external memory and I/O ports. The term controller v. the term process draws the line at where an OS starts. We will be a general purpose OS (associates with a general purpose μP). A car does not have an OS. It has a microcontroller in a so-called "controller module" for that make and model.

An OS is required, historically, when a computer not only runs a program, but runs it itself. An OS has an overhead unsuitable for smaller, simpler systems. An OS loads a program into main memory from which spot it jumps to being a process (either by queue or by simple command) as soon as its first instruction is executing. An OS runs several programs. An OS virtualizes the device for the several programs (makes it seem "there" exclusively for them). If several programs (stored in files, and run as processes) are needed, an OS (perhaps embedded) is required. But the only time several programs are needed is if the number of states that the system serves up is very large. Adding the concept of a stored, repeatable, sequence of states to a state machine, we get an instruction, and we approach infinite variability because processes can take a variety of input as instruction parameters in its many function calls. Processes are of a more infinite nature than state transitions, because of instructions. The same OS issued instruction can be run in any microprocessor with that instruction in its instruction set encoded into it's controller section. If, OTOH, the instructions at the microprocessor come from the hardware, its microcoded. — CpiralCpiral 02:56, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Device portability require a standard interface and OS portability requires a standard interface, but not all portability demands an OS. So it is not portability that drives the need for an OS, but portability drives the need for virtualization (abstraction, interfacing, translating). OS's virtualize everything for all involved with them. A handheld electronic device does not need an OS unless it is highly complex, which means it will probably have a human-machine-interface, and an embedded "OS".

From a μp- or μc-device's POV an instruction set is the closest to an OS that hardware ever sees or needs to see. A finite state-machine doesn't even have an instruction set. An general purpose OS is a software development platform and a software management platform, and a name-space and language-loving, literary machine. Cultural tensions and overly dramatic misunderstandings abound around words and ideas. The OS ends at the shell, be it a command line terminal or graphical terminal. The term operating system as usually used, and linked to here, usually does not mean the operating system that we will be covering. But, and this is a big but, we will get to explain. (Otherwise what links here is a good indicator of what the content should be.) Operating system as is casually used means "system operating" or what shipped as the "turnkey software system that operates the computer". Unix is not an operating system but an OS bundled with user modules. Windows is not an OS for the same reason—it bundles software outside the kernel and shell. Windows will even accepts a certain standard of Unix-like source code if you purchase the POSIX (now Windows Services for Unix module.)

But the customized Firefox you describe would be an OS because it would have no bundling, and it would be a monolithic kernel that even gobbled up shell space. — CpiralCpiral 02:56, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Article is entirely too long

I suggest that another article named "software client" is started. Most references to Microsoft Windows would be ported to that article. For almost all intents and purposes an operating system is only the kernel and an interface between the user and the the kernel. The only time a user accesses the operating system other than to modify it is to either install or access an application and even this is done via an application. Rather than clarifying misnomers aboot what an OS is it goes a long way to reinforce them. JustaAverageJoe (talk) 18:21, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Operating System —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.94.69.213 (talk) 13:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for playing the top of the chart, "too long of an article" song, along with a concrete suggestion improvisation. See also the number one topic of discussion and Talk:Operating_system/Archive_2#This_article_needs_a_great_deal_of_expansion.

Microsoft is a delicate subject. For speedy improvement of our English version, with minimum effort, neutrality is key. Careful handling of such a move is a skill. There are currently three sections titled with "Microsoft". Rather than porting to a new article, start by making it one section, using as the guide, and consider similar moves for other specific references to an OS.

CpiralCpiral 19:59, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

The "Writing Better Articles" article has a size section that highly encourages your idea! CpiralCpiral 02:39, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Good news from an influential wiki architect about another method besides the "summary style" method I posted just above. He says wikt:User:Eclecticology/Vision|recognize that some separation criteria are more important than others]]. In summary I have posted links to two styles of procedure for breaking up any article:

• summary style, and
• Data Hierarchy style

CpiralCpiral 18:13, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you want to limit the definition of an operating system to a kernel, or to everything outside of userspace...just because linux and unix did it doesn't mean it fits some defacto definition of all operating systems. Things get more complicated when you are talking about hybrid and microkernels too. I'm not talking just about microsoft products either—Mac OS X, GNU Hurd and BeOS all have a blurred line as to where the usermode of the kernel ends and where the other components start off. It bothers me to see this article be so pedantic towards a paradigm revolving around Linux.

And beyond all that, how the hell is someone supposed to know what an operating system is if you start on the most bare-bones approach, full of technical definitions? By removing information here such as the graphical user interface and the examples of Windows you've pretty much cut out 90% of all wikipedia users from understanding anything. People don't read this article because they already understand all of the concepts and vocabulary. They go to wikipedia first as a basic reference, when to them a computer is a magic box with a screen that gives them the internet.--Ferrenrock (talk) 08:01, 4 May 2010 (UTC)