Wow! This could be a disertation…start with this below: becareful though, you will find a lot of this information on the Internet make sure that you go to well known sites…like http://www.liux.com; http://www.microsoft.com All the well known OS that you have asked about will be more than happy to tell you on thier websites about their stories and what makes them who they are.
Mainframe computers
The earliest operating systems were developed for mainframe computer architectures in the 1960s. The enormous investment in software for these systems caused most of the original computer manufacturers to continue to develop hardware and operating systems that are compatible with those early operating systems. Those early sytems pioneered many of the features of modern operating systems. Mainframe operating systems that are still supported include:
Burroughs MCP– B5000,1961 to Unisys Clearpath/MCP, present.
IBM OS/360 — IBM System/360, 1964 to IBM zSeries, present
UNIVAC EXEC 8 — UNIVAC 1108, 1964, to Unisys Clearpath IX, present.
Modern mainframes typically also run Linux or Unix variants.
[edit] Embedded systems
Embedded systems use a variety of dedicated operating systems and limited versions of Linux or other operating systems. In some cases, the “operating system” software is directly linked to the application to produce a monolithic special-purpose program. In the simplest embedded systems, there is no distinction between the OS and the application. Embedded systems that have certain time requirements are known as Real-time operating systems.
[edit] Unix-like
A customized KDE desktop running under Linux.The Unix-like family is a diverse group of operating systems, with several major sub-categories including System V, BSD, and Linux. The name “UNIX” is a trademark of The Open Group which licenses it for use with any operating system that has been shown to conform to their definitions. “Unix-like” is commonly used to refer to the large set of operating systems which resemble the original Unix.
Unix systems run on a wide variety of machine architectures. They are used heavily as server systems in business, as well as workstations in academic and engineering environments. Free software Unix variants, such as Linux and BSD, are popular but have not reached significant market share in the desktop market. They are used in the desktop market as well, for example Ubuntu, but mostly by hobbyists.
Some Unix variants like HP’s HP-UX and IBM’s AIX are designed to run only on that vendor’s proprietary hardware. Others, such as Solaris, can run on both proprietary hardware and on commodity x86 PCs. Apple’s Mac OS X, a microkernel BSD variant derived from NeXTSTEP, Mach, and FreeBSD, has replaced Apple’s earlier (non-Unix) Mac OS. Over the past several years, free Unix systems have supplanted proprietary ones in most instances. For instance, scientific modeling and computer animation were once the province of SGI’s IRIX. Today, they are dominated by Linux-based or Plan 9 clusters. [citation needed]
The team at Bell Labs that designed and developed Unix went on to develop Plan 9 and Inferno, which were designed for modern distributed environments. They had graphics built-in, unlike Unix counterparts that added it to the design later. Plan 9 did not become popular because, unlike many Unix distributions, it was not originally free. It has since been released under Free Software and Open Source Lucent Public License, and has an expanding community of developers. Inferno was sold to Vita Nuova and has been released under a GPL/MIT license.
[edit] Microsoft Windows
A typical Windows XP desktop.The Microsoft Windows family of operating systems originated as a graphical layer on top of the older MS-DOS environment for the IBM PC. Modern versions are based on the newer Windows NT core that first took shape in OS/2 and borrowed from VMS. Windows runs on 32-bit and 64-bit Intel and AMD processors, although earlier versions also ran on the DEC Alpha, MIPS, Fairchild (later Intergraph) Clipper and PowerPC architectures (some work was done to port it to the SPARC architecture).
As of 2006, Windows held a near-monopoly of around 94% of the worldwide desktop market share, although some predict this to dwindle due to the increased interest in open source operating systems.[1] It is also used on low-end and mid-range servers, supporting applications such as web servers and database servers. In recent years, Microsoft has spent significant marketing and R&D money to demonstrate that Windows is capable of running any enterprise application which has resulted in consistent price/performance records (see the TPC) and significant acceptance in the enterprise market at the cost of existing Unix based system market share.
The most widely used version of the Microsoft Windows family is Microsoft Windows XP, released on October 25, 2001. The latest release of Windows XP is Windows XP Service Pack 2, released on August 6, 2004.
Microsoft has also released a new version of Windows, Windows Vista (formerly codenamed “Longhorn”), which contains new functionalities, particularly in security, network administration, and digital rights management. The GUI has been updated, as well; In addition to a new look for its standard 2D desktop interface, systems with sufficient processing power can use a 3D interface called Aero Glass.
Wow! This could be a disertation…start with this below: becareful though, you will find a lot of this information on the Internet make sure that you go to well known sites…like http://www.liux.com; http://www.microsoft.com All the well known OS that you have asked about will be more than happy to tell you on thier websites about their stories and what makes them who they are.
Mainframe computers
The earliest operating systems were developed for mainframe computer architectures in the 1960s. The enormous investment in software for these systems caused most of the original computer manufacturers to continue to develop hardware and operating systems that are compatible with those early operating systems. Those early sytems pioneered many of the features of modern operating systems. Mainframe operating systems that are still supported include:
Burroughs MCP– B5000,1961 to Unisys Clearpath/MCP, present.
IBM OS/360 — IBM System/360, 1964 to IBM zSeries, present
UNIVAC EXEC 8 — UNIVAC 1108, 1964, to Unisys Clearpath IX, present.
Modern mainframes typically also run Linux or Unix variants.
[edit] Embedded systems
Embedded systems use a variety of dedicated operating systems and limited versions of Linux or other operating systems. In some cases, the “operating system” software is directly linked to the application to produce a monolithic special-purpose program. In the simplest embedded systems, there is no distinction between the OS and the application. Embedded systems that have certain time requirements are known as Real-time operating systems.
[edit] Unix-like
A customized KDE desktop running under Linux.The Unix-like family is a diverse group of operating systems, with several major sub-categories including System V, BSD, and Linux. The name “UNIX” is a trademark of The Open Group which licenses it for use with any operating system that has been shown to conform to their definitions. “Unix-like” is commonly used to refer to the large set of operating systems which resemble the original Unix.
Unix systems run on a wide variety of machine architectures. They are used heavily as server systems in business, as well as workstations in academic and engineering environments. Free software Unix variants, such as Linux and BSD, are popular but have not reached significant market share in the desktop market. They are used in the desktop market as well, for example Ubuntu, but mostly by hobbyists.
Some Unix variants like HP’s HP-UX and IBM’s AIX are designed to run only on that vendor’s proprietary hardware. Others, such as Solaris, can run on both proprietary hardware and on commodity x86 PCs. Apple’s Mac OS X, a microkernel BSD variant derived from NeXTSTEP, Mach, and FreeBSD, has replaced Apple’s earlier (non-Unix) Mac OS. Over the past several years, free Unix systems have supplanted proprietary ones in most instances. For instance, scientific modeling and computer animation were once the province of SGI’s IRIX. Today, they are dominated by Linux-based or Plan 9 clusters. [citation needed]
The team at Bell Labs that designed and developed Unix went on to develop Plan 9 and Inferno, which were designed for modern distributed environments. They had graphics built-in, unlike Unix counterparts that added it to the design later. Plan 9 did not become popular because, unlike many Unix distributions, it was not originally free. It has since been released under Free Software and Open Source Lucent Public License, and has an expanding community of developers. Inferno was sold to Vita Nuova and has been released under a GPL/MIT license.
[edit] Microsoft Windows
A typical Windows XP desktop.The Microsoft Windows family of operating systems originated as a graphical layer on top of the older MS-DOS environment for the IBM PC. Modern versions are based on the newer Windows NT core that first took shape in OS/2 and borrowed from VMS. Windows runs on 32-bit and 64-bit Intel and AMD processors, although earlier versions also ran on the DEC Alpha, MIPS, Fairchild (later Intergraph) Clipper and PowerPC architectures (some work was done to port it to the SPARC architecture).
As of 2006, Windows held a near-monopoly of around 94% of the worldwide desktop market share, although some predict this to dwindle due to the increased interest in open source operating systems.[1] It is also used on low-end and mid-range servers, supporting applications such as web servers and database servers. In recent years, Microsoft has spent significant marketing and R&D money to demonstrate that Windows is capable of running any enterprise application which has resulted in consistent price/performance records (see the TPC) and significant acceptance in the enterprise market at the cost of existing Unix based system market share.
The most widely used version of the Microsoft Windows family is Microsoft Windows XP, released on October 25, 2001. The latest release of Windows XP is Windows XP Service Pack 2, released on August 6, 2004.
Microsoft has also released a new version of Windows, Windows Vista (formerly codenamed “Longhorn”), which contains new functionalities, particularly in security, network administration, and digital rights management. The GUI has been updated, as well; In addition to a new look for its standard 2D desktop interface, systems with sufficient processing power can use a 3D interface called Aero Glass.