Microsoft Windows Basics

Windows is a ubiquitous and constantly evolving, user-driven operating system. With many versions to choose from offering diverse user experiences and options, there is definitely a Windows operating system that fits the needs of every computer user, developer, and gamer. Given the generalized nature of Windows operating system, there are also many benefits of using them. Most notably, this includes compatibility with most programs and a highly intuitive as well as easy-to-use Graphic User Interface. This makes it arguably the best set of operating systems on the market. Windows also comes with many provisions to increase security for home computers, professional/organizational computers, and web browsing. From wireless connection protection to user-level access control, Windows operating system users can customize their security options for the best possible fit as well as the most possible security. This is even further guaranteed with updates that are released frequently to ensure that security is up to date. This isnt to say that steps shouldnt be taken by users in order to verify that the utmost security is maintained. This includes avoiding open source and torrent programs, performing frequent virus scans, accepting Windows updates and keeping Windows Updater active, limiting access to resources, and turning off unneeded services.

UNIX
Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX, sometimes also written as UNIX) is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T. The Unix operating system was first developed in assembly language, but by 1973 had been almost entirely recoded in C, greatly facilitating its further development and porting to other hardware. 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 second edition of Unix was released on December 6th, 1972. 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 might

be called "Unix system-like" or "Unix-like" (though the Open Group disapproves[1] of this term). However, the term "Unix" is often used informally to denote any operating system that closely resembles the trademarked system. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the influence of Unix in academic circles led to large-scale adoption of Unix (particularly of the BSD variant, originating from the University of California, Berkeley) by commercial startups, the most notable of which are Solaris, HP-UX and AIX. Among all variants of Unix, Linux is the most widely used, powering everything from huge data centers to desktop systems to mobile phones to embedded devices such as routers. OS X currently has the biggest use on personal computers with more than fifty five million systems installed. Today, in addition to certified Unix systems such as those already mentioned, Unix-like operating systems such as MINIX, Linux and BSD descendants (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and DragonFly BSD) are commonly encountered. The term "traditional Unix" may be used to describe a Unix or an operating system that has the characteristics of either Version 7 Unix or UNIX System V Unix operating systems are widely used in servers, workstations, and mobile devices.[2] The Unix environment and the clientserver program model were essential elements in the development of theInternet and the reshaping of computing as centered in networks rather than in individual computers. Originally, Unix was meant to be a programmer's workbench rather than be used to run application software. The system grew larger when the operating system started spreading in the academic circle. Many individual users started adding their own tools to the system and passing it along to colleagues Both Unix and the C programming language were developed by AT&T and distributed to government and academic institutions, which led to both being ported to a wider variety of machine families than any other operating system. As a result, Unix became synonymous with "open systems". Unix was designed to be portable, multi-tasking and multi-user in a timesharing configuration. Unix systems are characterized by various concepts: the use of plain text for storing data; a hierarchicalfile system; treating devices and certain types of inter-process communication (IPC) as files; and the use of a large number of software tools, small programs that can be strung together through acommand line interpreter using pipes, as opposed to using a single monolithic program that includes all of the same functionality. These concepts are collectively known as the Unix philosophy. Kernighan and Pike summarize

this in The Unix Programming Environment as "the idea that the power of a system comes more from the relationships among programs than from the programs themselves." Under Unix, the "operating system" consists of many utilities along with the master control program, the kernel. The kernel provides services to start and stop programs, handles the file system and other common "low level" tasks that most programs share, and, perhaps most importantly, schedules access to hardware to avoid conflicts if two programs try to access the same resource or device simultaneously. To mediate such access, the kernel was given special rights on the system, leading to the division between userspace and kernel-space. The microkernel concept was introduced in an effort to reverse the trend towards larger kernels and return to a system in which most tasks were completed by smaller utilities. In an era when a "normal" computer consisted of a hard disk for storage and a data terminal for input and output (I/O), the Unix file model worked quite well as most I/O was "linear". However, modern systems include networking and other new devices. As graphical user interfaces developed, the file model proved inadequate to the task of handling asynchronous events such as those generated by a mouse, and in the 1980s non-blocking I/O and the set of inter-process communication mechanisms was augmented (sockets, shared memory, message queues, semaphores), and functionalities such as network protocols were moved out of the kernel The Unix system had significant impact on other operating systems. It won its success by:

Direct interaction. Moving away from the total control of businesses like IBM and DEC. AT&T being willing to give the software away for free. Running on cheap hardware. Being easy to adopt and move to different machines.

It was written in high level language rather than assembly language (which had been thought necessary for systems implementation on early computers). Although this followed the lead of Multics andBurroughs, it was Unix that popularized the idea. Unix had a drastically simplified file model compared to many contemporary operating systems, treating all kinds of files as simple byte arrays. The file

system hierarchy contained machine services and devices (such as printers, terminals, or disk drives), providing a uniform interface, but at the expense of occasionally requiring additional mechanisms such as ioctl and mode flags to access features of the hardware that did not fit the simple "stream of bytes" model. The Plan 9 operating system pushed this model even further and eliminated the need for additional mechanisms. Unix also popularized the hierarchical file system with arbitrarily nested subdirectories, originally introduced by Multics.