Info Tech Guide

Windows 2000 is based of the Windows NT Kernel and is sometimes referred to as Windows NT 5.0. Windows 2000 contains over 29 Million lines of code, mainly written in C++. 8 Million of those lines alone are written for drivers. Currently, Windows 2000 is by far one of the largest commercial projects ever built.

Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, business desktops, laptops, and servers. Released on 17 February 2000,it was the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the final release of Microsoft Windows to display the "Windows NT" designation. It was succeeded by Windows XP for desktop systems in October 2001 and Windows Server 2003 for servers in April 2003. Windows Me was released seven months after Windows 2000 and one year before Windows XP, but Windows Me was not intended to be, nor did it serve as the successor to Windows 2000. Windows Me was designed for home use, while Windows 2000 was designed for business.

Windows 98 (codenamed Memphis) is a graphical operating system by Microsoft. It is the second major release in the Windows 9x line of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on 15th May 1998 and to retail on 25th June 1998. Windows 98 is the successor to Windows 95. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid 16-bit/32-bit monolithic product with an MS-DOS based boot loader. 

Windows 98 was succeeded by Windows 98 Second Edition on 5 May 1999, then by Windows ME (Millenium Edition) on 14 September 2000. Microsoft support for Windows 98 ended on 11 July 2006.

Microsoft Windows 98 is the upgrade to Microsoft Windows 95. While this was not as big as release as Windows 95, Windows 98 has significant updates, fixes and support for new peripherals.

Windows NT 4.0 Workstation Screen shots

Windows NT 4.0 is a preemptive, graphical and business-oriented operating system designed to work with either uniprocessor or symmetric multi-processor computers. It was the next release of Microsoft's Windows NT line of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on 31 July 1996. It is a 32-bit Windows system available in both workstation and server editions with a graphical environment similar to that of Windows 95. The "NT" designation in the product's title initially stood for "New Technology" according to Microsoft's then-CEO Bill Gates, but now no longer has any specific meaning. Windows NT 4.0 was succeeded by Windows 2000 in February 2000. Windows NT 4.0 is classified as a hybrid kernel operating system.

Windows 95 integrated Microsoft's formerly separate MS-DOS and Windows products. It features significant improvements over its predecessor, Windows 3.1, most notably in the graphical user interface (GUI) and in its simplified "plug-n-play" features. There were also major changes made at lower levels of the operating system, such as moving from a mainly 16-bit architecture to a pre-emptively multitasked 32-bit architecture.

Microsoft Windows NT Version 3.1

In May 1993 the first Windows NT (New Technology) version 3.1 came as a Workstation (Client) and Advanced Server operating system for Intel x86 and RISC architecture to the market. It is the indirect successor to Windows 3.0 and OS/2 2.0 in the new NT product line for high demands on stability. It allows 32-bit applications and makes them available each up to 2 GB of virtual memory. The protected memory area ensures the stability of Windows NT if an application has a crash. To protect against power outages, the use of a UPS is supported. The operating system is suitable as a network client and in the office. The system structure is based on a micro-kernel with support for up to 2 CPUs and can address a maximum of 64 MB of RAM. The file systems NTFS, HPFS and FAT-16 are fully supported. This version of Windows does not support Plug and Play.

Linux Operating System

Linux refers to the family of Unix-like computer operating systems using the Linux kernel. Linux can be installed on a wide variety of computer hardware, ranging from mobile phones, tablet computers and video game consoles, to mainframes and supercomputers. Linux is the leading server OS, accounting for more than 50% of installations. Desktop use of Linux has increased in recent years, partly owing to the popular Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE distributions and the emergence of netbooks and smartphones running an embedded Linux.

The development of Linux is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed, both commercially and non-commercially, by anyone under licenses such as the GNU General Public License. Typically Linux is packaged in a format known as a Linux distribution for desktop and server use. Linux distributions include the Linux kernel and all of the supporting software required to run a complete system, such as utilities and libraries, the X Window System, the GNOME and KDE desktop environments, and the Apache HTTP Server. Commonly used applications with desktop Linux systems include the Mozilla Firefox web-browser, the OpenOffice.org office application suite and the GIMP image editor.

The name "Linux" comes from the Linux kernel, originally written in 1991 by Linus Torvalds. The main supporting user space system tools and libraries from the GNU Project (announced in 1983 by Richard Stallman) are the basis for the Free Software Foundation's preferred name GNU/Linux.

Mac OS is the trademark-protected name for a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. (formerly Apple Computer, Inc.) for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface. The original form of what Apple would later name the "Mac OS" was the integral and unnamed system software first introduced in 1984 with the original Macintosh, usually referred to simply as the System software.

Apple deliberately downplayed the existence of the operating system in the early years of the Macintosh[citation needed] to help make the machine appear more user-friendly and to distance it from other operating systems such as MS-DOS, which was more arcane and technically challenging. Much of this early system software was held in ROM, with updates typically provided free of charge by Apple dealers on floppy disk. As increasing disk storage capacity and performance gradually eliminated the need for storing much of the advanced GUI operating system in the ROM, Apple explored clones while positioning major operating system upgrades as separate revenue-generating products, first with System 7.1 and System 7.5, then with Mac OS 7.6 in 1997.

Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX, sometimes also written as Unix with small caps) is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna. Today's Unix systems are split into various branches, developed over time by AT&T as well as various commercial vendors and non-profit organizations.

The Open Group, an industry standards consortium, owns the “Unix” trademark. Only systems fully compliant with and certified according to the Single UNIX Specification are qualified to use the trademark; others may be called "Unix system-like" or "Unix-like" (though the Open Group disapproves of this term). However, the term "Unix" is often used informally to denote any operating system that closely resembles the trademarked system.

Microsoft Windows is a family of proprietary operating systems most commonly used on personal computers. It is the most common family of operating systems for the personal computer, with about 90% of the market share.Currently, the most widely used version of the Windows family is Windows XP, released on October 25, 2001. The newest version is Windows 7 for personal computers and Windows Server 2008 R2 for servers.

Windows is a personal computer operating system from Microsoft that, together with some commonly used business applications such as Microsoft Word and Excel, has become a de facto "standard" for individual users in most corporations as well as in most homes. Windows contains built-in networking, which allows users to share files and applications with each other if their PCs are connected to a network. In large enterprises, Windows clients are often connected to a network of UNIX and NetWare servers. The server versions of Windows NT and Windows 2000 are gaining market share, providing a Windows-only solution for both the client and server. Windows is supported by Microsoft, the largest software company in the world, as well as the Windows industry at large, which includes tens of thousands of software developers.

An operating system (OS) is software, consisting of programs and data, that runs on computers and manages the computer hardware and provides common services for efficient execution of various application software.Operating System is the most important program that runs on a computer. Every general-purpose computer must have an operating system to run other programs.

For hardware functions such as input and output and memory allocation, the operating system acts as an intermediary between application programs and the computer hardware,although the application code is usually executed directly by the hardware, but will frequently call the OS or be interrupted by it. Operating systems are found on almost any device that contains a computer—from cellular phones and video game consoles to supercomputers and web servers.