We all know that today's computers use an operating system to operate. Let's talk a bit on what exactly is an OS and what it does.
You can think of the OS as the middle person in a business transaction. Assume that in this case the business transaction is the moving of your mouse across the screen, opening your web browser or opening your word processor. These commands are taken care of by the OS installed on your computer. You do not have to worry about the nitty gritty of electronics and get your hands dirty under the hood to perform these tasks yourself. You just move and click your little mouse and everything is done for you by your OS. Basically, we can say that without an OS, a computer is practically useless to us!
Operating systems are also installed and used to control other devices, from mobile phones to routers.
Microsoft today holds some 87 per cent of the OS market. This means that the Windows OS is the most used OS in the world. Most of you would have had some experience with one of Microsoft's numerous operating systems. There are numerous flavours of this OS that was put on the market in the 1990s. Some of these are Windows 95/98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and the latest - Vista, just to name a few.
Microsoft fans will be waiting for the very latest of these that will be rolled out soon, called Windows 7. If you want to know more about this OS, you can read reviews from people that have tried the beta version or you can download an RC (release candidate, which is in its 7100 build) from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx .
Be very careful: this is not a free OS but just aimed at IT professionals to download, install, test and report back to Microsoft with bugs, things that need fixing and suggestions. The current RC version (while I am writing this) will expire on June 1, 2010.
This brings me to a very interesting task that some of you might take up and try for themselves. Wouldn't it be nice if you had a "spare" computer to install this OS on, to try it out? Maybe you want to try to install a programme but you are afraid it might corrupt your settings or worse, your computer. We will be talking about another way of doing this later on in this series of columns dedicated to operating systems and other trial software.
There are other OSs that can work on our computers. As a matter of fact, the list is quite long.
For example, all the Mac (or Macintosh) computers come pre-loaded with their own OS, which is called "Mac OS X" and accounts to 9.73 per cent of the global OS market.
There are OSs that you have to buy and some that are called Open Source. This means that contributors write the code for no fee and this is distributed on the net under the GNU/GPL (General Public License) free license. This means that nobody can charge anyone for this OS except for the media that it is distributed on.
The most popular OS in this category is Linux. You may think that 1.02 per cent of the global OS market is not much but when you consider that this OS does not enjoy any marketing or advertising you might look at it differently. The name "LINUX" is a generic term for "LIKE-UNIX". This OS is based on the Linux Kernel (the core of any OS) and was originally written by Linus Torvalds in 1991.
Linux has come a long way since then, thanks to the contributions and hard work of the GNU community. At the beginning Linux was only used by computer experts because it was a command line OS (no pretty little icons, no desktop and no recycle bin; these days you won't recognise it from other graphical OSs). The strengths of this OS are many. Some of these strengths worth mentioning are user security, stability, virtually virus free, free to use and own, access to all source code, choice of different flavors (called distributions in the Linux world).
The downside to this OS is that it will not easily run Windows software. Notice the word "easily". These days there are ways to run a lot of Windows software on Linux. Food for thought for some of you who might be thinking of making the switch is the fact that most of the normal day-to-day business/entertainment applications already exist for Linux. Again, they are all free. These include office applications (which can read/write files that are compatible with all the other well known applications on other OSs), CD/DVD burners, media players... and the list goes on and on.
The problem we are faced with again is that to try this OS we need a spare computer, right? Wrong!
Join me next time and I will show you how you can try all the OSs you can get your hands on and any other software you always wanted to see working but were always afraid to try on your PC. We can do this safely on just one PC without affecting your regular computer's functionality.
Mr Marshall, a certified computer programmer and technician, is giving regular tips in i-Tech on how to make the best and safest use of computers. He can be contacted at noelmarshall.itech@gmail.com.