Some time ago, back in the later 90’s there was the OS wars
and clearly right now it seems that Microsoft’s Windows was the winner …. Or is
it?
In the 90’s we had a few different Operating Systems
·
Microsoft - Client
o DOS
6.22 with Windows 3.11
o Windows
95, 98 and Me
o Windows
Ce
·
Microsoft – Server Base
o Windows
NT 3.5 and NT 4
·
Novell – Server Base
o NetWare
3.5, 4 and 6
§
Clients for Windows
§
DOS
§
OS/2
·
IBM – Clint
o PC
DOS (With MS)
o IBM
DOS
o OS/2
1.x (With MS for Windows 3.1)
o OS/2
2.x and Warp 3
·
IBM – Server Base
o There
are too many to list here, because IBM had Main Frames, Mini Computers and PC
server base software
·
Bell Labs – Server Base
o UNIX
·
Be Inc. – Client
o BeOS
·
Apple
o Apple
DOS
o System
6, 7, 8, 9 and “Star Trek”
·
Other
o Amiga
o Atari
o Digital
Research
o Fujitsu
o Hewlett-Packard
o Honeywell
o Intel
o SCO
o Unisys
Now the main OS that was being used in Universities was an
UNIX system. New grow of computer
programs started to develop a new OS, one that was UNIX base so that they can
do their work form home. What made
this so different, programmers where based around the world and they sent there
source files and chatted about their work over the Internet. They also want to make this new OS,
free and viable to anyone who wants to use it and make it their own. And GNU project was born and every one
didn’t believe that this new OS’s would be good or stable to use for normal
home use PC.
This group end splitting up and two different OS’s came out
of it. FreeBSD and Linux. With
Linux camp we saw RedHat, Slackware and Debian Linux. These three are the first
ones and all of the Linux are based from one of them.
Debian’s Family Tree
Redhat’s Family Tree
Slackware’s
Family Tree
Some time ago, back in 98 I
was going to school, taking some computer classes and one day while we where
having a smoke. One of my classe
mates said “I’m not worry about learning about other OS. I am going to be just focusing on
Mircosoft Windows.” I replied “Windows isn’t the only OS. I would like learn all that I could.”
And he said “Windows will end up being the only OS for PC and Servers. So why bother learning any thing
else”. And I said, “One day
Microsoft will not be the only OS for PC or servers. And others OS like OS/2,
Linux and Apple will be around we’ll see more of mix networks where all OS will
have to be connected and share resources”.
So the other day while I was
at work, I was talking to co-worker and we where talking about compuers and OS,
like how well Windows 8 is doing … well lack of it ..
And I said that we may see
MacOS and Linux systems grow … and he said “Linux, is it still around?”. We
have small electonics in our store and said this store is full of Linux
devices.
Now I still like to play
around with OS’s and I have used Windows 8. I can say I hate it.
Not because I’m not a MS fan.
But for a PC Windows 8 is hard to use with a keyboard and mouse. It’s great for the touchscreens, like
tablets and touchscreen computers.
A bit of history of MS Windows,
in 1995 Windows 95 came out. It
was nice but it was buggy and it didn’t support some thing like connecting to
the Internet. Bill Gates did
believe that the Internet would be here for long. But the biggest downfall of this Windows is, it was still base
on DOS, DOS 7 and it still had some limitations to it. In 96 I took 2 computers both the same
PS/2 style system with 386DX with 8 meg of RAM. 1 system I installed Windows 95 the other IBM OS/2 Warp
3. The OS/2 out profromed the
Windows 95, but what made the differences was programs. Yes MS Windows had more program support. It seemed that all the programers
switch to making Windows programs.
One of the test that I was running was BBS where people would call and
connect to my computer to play games download/upload files and to use message
boards. With the OS/2 I was able
to use my computer and share it out to other people to use at the same
time. With Windows 95, I couldn’t
do this one I could use or a caller could. If I want to I could have boughten other software to share
out my system, witch I did but it also made my system unstalbe so it crash a
lot. So that wasn’t a good option
at all.
Then came Windows 98 and
Windows 98se (second edtion).
There wasn’t a lot of change in the OS it self, many in user interface
and Internet support, with a lot of bug fixes so Windows became more
stable.
In 2000 Windows Me was
released it seem to take two steps backwards from Windows 98. There where a lot of issues with
Windows Me. The only good thing
that came out of this, was Mirocosoft decession to combie the next Windows with
WindowsNT.
So now Window 4.x was dead
(Win95 – 4, Win98 – 4.1 and WinME – 4.9) and WindowsNT Client would be go
through a big change and it would be the next OS for Windows. And in 2001 MS came with Windows XP,
witch was comibing of WindowsMe and Windows 2000 (client). Windows XP didn’t have a lot of the
limitations like the Windows 4.x’s had.
With use of muple CPU’s and more memory. It had it’s bumps in to road with a lot of bug fixes and backdoors
that need to be fix. It was also
that was attack by hackers, there was a lot of virus that came out for
Windows. One of Apple’s saying
“You don’t have to worry about virus with MacOS”.
There was one big change that
made this a nice OS to use. It was
more network friendly, but only to “Windows Family Networks”. So setting up a network with all
Microsoft products was fairly easy.
Now because I like to play, I had a Linux Box, so I had to installed and
configure Samba (Server Message Block [SMB]). So with my Samba Server running I can connect to my Linux
form my Windows XP system. And my
Windows XP was reporting that I was connecting to a Windows Server and not a
Linux Server.
My option of Windows XP, it
was a nice OS, onces you get all the service packs and bug fixes for it. It was a big improvement over the
Windows 4.x’s, but it still had some littimations and problems. Even in December 2012 it is still
widely used
Windows 8
|
1.72%
|
Windows 7
|
45.11%
|
Widnows Vista
|
5.67%
|
Windows XP
|
39.08%
|
A lot of business still use
Windows XP as their Desktop computer, point of sale and there are still some
home users still refusing to upgrade their OS.
One major change in Windows
XP, it no longer supported VB (Visual Basic) it was replaced by .Net Frame Work.
In 2007 Windows Vista came
out, there isn’t a lot of good things to say about Vista. It was the first time that people took
their computer back to the store and deamanded to have Windows Vista removed
off of their computer and install Windows XP on them. One of the biggest
complants was all the different editions of this windows 6 in total witch was
crasy for one OS. Cost was another
issues It was the most expensive of OS on the market. New added features to
Windows Vista was the new, witch was a good thing, how ever it was in your face
all the time and you had to mess around with the securty setting to get a lot
done.
There where a few new changes within Windows Vista, like
Services For UNIX witch gave Vista users client support for Network File System
(NFS), this is widely viable in UNIX, Linux and MacOS.
Windows Vista came in to different types 32bit and
64bit. Most of all the Windows
only came in 32bit from the days of Window 95 to XP. Why 64bit? And what did it mean for the end user? The main
difference that end-use would notice up front was the amount of RAM that could
be installed into the computer. Another
is better multi task, and multiple CPU or Cores. This makes running more applications faster and
smoother.
Operating System
|
32 Bit (x86)
|
64 Bit (x64)
|
Windows 4.x
|
1.5 GB
|
Not Supported
|
Windows XP (Starter
Edition)
|
4 GB
|
Not Supported
|
Windows XP (professional)
|
4 GB
|
128 GB
|
Windows Vista (Starter)
|
1 GB
|
Not Supported
|
Windows Vista (Home Basic)
|
4 GB
|
8 GB
|
Windows Vista (Home
Premium)
|
4 GB
|
16 GB
|
Windows Vista (Ultimate)
|
4 GB
|
128 GB
|
Windows 7 (Starter)
|
2 GB
|
Not Supported
|
Windows 7 (Home Basic)
|
4 GB
|
8 GB
|
Windows 7 (Home Premium)
|
4 GB
|
16 GB
|
Windows 7 (Ultimate)
|
4 GB
|
192 GB
|
Windows 8
|
4 GB
|
128 GB
|
Windows 8 (Professional)
|
4 GB
|
512 GB
|
Linux
|
4 GB
|
1 TB
|
MacOS X
|
Not Supported
|
16 TB
|
The table above, Windows 4.x
only came in 32bit and MacOS X only comes in 64 bits. Linux dose come in 32 and
64 bits because you can use old computer systems, to make it backwards compatible.
One thing about Windows, if
you put more RAM in it that it can’t handle it made your system very unstable,
for example if you had Windows Vista Home Basic and you installed the 64bit
version and put in 10 GB of Ram.
Your computer will be crashing or locking up all the time. To me it’s kinda odd that Microsoft
would limit the maximum amount of RAM in the system, unless it has to do with
the coding of core operating system.
In 2009, Windows 7 was
release. This release of Windows
was a good one, it what Windows Vista should have been. This release had some really good
improvements like the multi-core processors (with 2x, 4x and 6x cores). Support
for “Raw” image format, read ISO, to be able to identify solid-state drives,
USB3, better backup system and support for SOAP-based services in the native
code.
So over all it’s one of
Microsoft’s best windows that I have used.
This past year 2012 Windows 8
was released. WOW I couldn’t
believe my eyes … and I though, is
Microsoft trying to kill PC market?
I have used Windows 8 on
regular PC and on a touch screen. It
was two completely different experiences. On the touch screen it ran really
nice, not big fan of the “Start Screen” with the titles. Now on a non-touch screen it wasn’t
good and I find it very cumbersome use.
Like to get to the control panel you would have to first go to the
desktop -> move the mouse to the upper right corner -> and wait for the
side menu to pop out -> and then click on control panel … I would miss the
old way click “Start” and then control panel. I doubt that I would ever get this type of OS, I don’t use a
touch and I don’t have any plans on getting one. I believe that my OS should be easy to use and to get to my
application very quickly with out hooping all over the place. One think that Microsoft should have
done was to drop the 32bit version and just supported the 64bit. It’s time for today and not yesterday
standards.
So I will be staying with my
Windows 7 and the next systems that I will be building will be either a Hackintosh
or Linux.
Now I left to thinking about
the future of the PC. Is it going
to die off a slow death or will it continue, but in a different way …
Over the last 13 years we
have seen a lot of changes in the tech area. Lets start of with the “Smart Phones”, RIM came out with the
BlackBerry (BB) and it was the widely used up to 2008 and some people where so
attach to their BB that people start to call it “CrackBerry”. Then came the iPhones’ and then
Androids’ phones and it almost killed BB.
So there was a big leap here, because for the most part cellular phones
where very cumbersome for texting and getting anything from the Internet. Until
these new phones came out.
So what really make smart
phone “Smart”? They are really pocket computers; they have CPU’s and an
OS. So today cellular phone can do
a lot more then computer back in the 90’s.
Latest Smart Phone OS
(January 2013)
RIM -> BlackBerry 10 (to
be release in the first ¼ of 2013)
Apple -> IOS, 6.0.2
(September 2012)
Google -> Android, 4.2.1
Jelly Bean (November 2012)
Microsoft -> Windows 8, 6.2
(October 2012)
Smart Phone
|
Units Sold
|
2012 Market Share
|
2011 Market Share
|
Android
|
104.8 Million
|
68.1%
|
46.9%
|
iPhone
|
26.0 Million
|
16.9%
|
18.8%
|
BlackBerry
|
7.4 Million
|
4.8%
|
11.5%
|
Symbian
|
6.8 Million
|
4.4%
|
16.9%
|
Windows
|
5.4 Million
|
3.5%
|
2.3%
|
Linux
|
3.5 Million
|
2.3%
|
3.0%
|
Other
|
0.1 Million
|
0.1%
|
0.5%
|
The table above is the market
share of Smart Phones, in September 2012.
This is really going to be
changing very quickly, because this is not including the lunch of Windows 8
Phones, BlackBerry 10 and release of iPhone 5 in China, witch sold 2 million
phones on the first weekend.
It looks like Google’s
Android is winning the market share of the smart phones. But there is something
to think about here. Android can
be install on almost any hardware platform, and other like Apples IOS only on
Apple hardware and the same with RIM’s BlackBerry. After all Android is
Google’s Linux and as we know Linux can be installed on almost any hardware
platform. Companies like Apple like to control what hardware it can use. Controlling what hardware dose has its
good and bad points. One good
thing is when you use the hard you know it is going to work with very little
problems. The only thing is, it
can inflate the price and restrict what hardware can be used. Apple always
controlled the hardware for all of its products, and we have seen what it did
for the home computers. The PC
became cheaper with more different companies popping up making more hardware. The only thing is the lack of quality
and support for all of this hardware.
We all have seen something like this with MS-Windows. Microsoft tried to make Windows to run
all kinds of hardware platforms; the main issue is that Microsoft had to rely
on manufactures to develop device drivers for their hard, witch in some cases
cause the your computer to be unstable or crash. And this should concern Google’s
Android team; it’s almost the same path that Microsoft went down.
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