Internetworking Operating Systems
In a Nutshell - CIW Course Section 3, Part A1, Chapter 2
Microsoft Windows Family
Microsoft Windows 3.11 released in 1992 was the first version of Windows to support office networking. The following year, 1993, saw the introduction of Windows NT 3.11 a serious contender for Novell's Netware. 1995 hailed the long awaited arrival of Windows 95 a 32-bit version of Windows with much improved multi-tasking abilities and a virtual MS-DOS session. This was followed, three years later by Windows 98 which added support for FAT32 and much bigger disk partitions.
The turn of the century saw the emergence of Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me) a game playing multimedia waste of time, in my opinion, but it also heralded the arrival of Windows 2000 possibly, again in my opinion, one of the best pieces of software ever to come out of the Microsoft stable. Windows 2000 came with Active Directory Services, allegedly, inspired by Novell's directory service (NDS). We are now up to Windows 2003 which has an updated user interface.
Windows XP is perhaps the next big departure for Microsoft, with a whole new interface and home and business versions based on the same code. Essentially built on Windows 2000 code it is the first desktop with NTFS and perhaps the best plug-and-play support yet.
Novell NetWare
Predating Windows by several years, NetWare was the industry standard network operating system. Developed in 1989 the network communication was with IPX/SPX (Internet Packet Exchange/Sequenced Packer Exchange) protocols and it wouldn't be until version 5 that Novell adopted TCP/IP. NDS is a hierarchical directory structure to map all objects within an organisation. NDS also provides a centralised login for Novell, Unix and Windows clients. NetWare 5, as well as using TCP/IP now uses Java as it's application language.
Unix
Unix was originally developed by Bell Labs in 1969 and has evolved into a powerful, multi-tasking operating system. It has since spawned many variants, commonly called flavours, not least the popular, almost ubiquitous, Linux. Unix uses TCP/IP as it's core networking protocol. Each flavour of Unix provides three core elements: The Kernel which is the central module, a shell which is the user interface, and a file system.
Some of the more common shells are: The Bourne shell (sh), the Korn shell (ksh), the C shell (csh) and the Bourne again shell (bash). The Bourne again shell is distributed with Linux.
BSD
Berkeley Systems Distribution was developed at the Berkeley Campus of the University of California. FreeBSD, NetBSD and SunOS are all examples of the BSD implementation and all have versions to run on the Intel, Alpha and Sparc platforms.
Unix System V
Developed by the AT&T and Sun Microsystems Alliance, a popular example is Sun's Solaris. Other flavours include HP-UX from Hewlett Packard and Advanced Interactive eXecutive (AIX) from IBM.
Linux
A hybrid of the BSD and System V versions, it is open-source and, therefore, not supported by any one vendor or organisation. Available in both free and commercial versions.
Unix was originally, and largely still is, a command line driven operating system, but with over 600 commands, it was only a matter of time before somebody devised a GUI. Perhaps, the best known of these is the X Windows System.
Selecting an Operating System
What should you consider when choosing which Operating System to purchase? There are a number of factors which need to be weighed up before making a decision.
- Will it run your Applications
- What Hardware will it Require
- Cost of Required Hardware
- Availability and Cost of Support Staff
- Ease of Use
- Availability of Technical Support