Choosing the Right Operating System

There are a number of operating systems on the market today and each brand such as Windows, UNIX, Linux or iMac has a number of flavors to cater for the divergent needs of the different group of users. The different flavors also represent the evolution of operating systems over a span of 20-odd years

Correspondingly, the dominant players in the Operating Systems market are as follows:

Microsoft Windows

With the introduction of MS-DOS based windows in 1983, Microsoft has continued to remain a major player in the desktop environment worldwide. Its key advantages include the “user-friendliness” and "ease-of-use". Each version forms a milestone in the computer history due to its functionalities that appeared innovative at the time of release.

During the 1990’s, it maintained two major streams of operating systems, which were targeted at the Home (Windows 95-98) and Business Users (Windows NT).  Windows XP (Extreme Programming) was released which proposed a new universal platform that can collaborate with and maximize the diverging technologies like networking. Windows 7 was released after Windows Vista couldn’t do well on the market. Windows 10 is the latest version on the market after Window 8 was released. It employs state of the art GUI which makes it more interactive. An average Windows operating system user would be someone who has a preference for GUI-based approach with medium to heavy use of applications such as Office etc. The user’s focus is more on using the computer as a tool to achieve the daily activities. Windows OS has been ideal as it offers the ability to execute daily tasks without knowing how they are accomplished.

UNIX

This was first developed in 1969 by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie at Bell Laboratories. UNIX operating system is known for its simplistic algorithms and clean design. The flexibility attained through simplicity facilitated various companies to tailor it to their own systems by adding specific flavors, for example, IBM (AIX), Macintosh and Windows NT (XENIX). It possesses a simple user interface in the form of a shell. UNIX operating system has always been an operating system for the programmers. It has also been extensively used by academia owing to its fundamental OS design emphasizing time-sharing, multi-processing, multi-tasking and so forth.

Macintosh

Steve Jobs and Steven Wozniak founded Apple in 1976 with the release of APPLE I. It is the only player in the market that provides for not only the operating systems but also the computer system. This enables strength arising out of the compatibility existing between the hardware and the software. The Unix-based design leads to further stability. With the release of the OS X operating system, the level of the graphical user interface has reached new standards. The level of connectivity and the diversity of tasks that can be accomplished through the applications offered have made it leading seller in current times.

In the earlier days, Apple computers were always targeting the economically high end users. The market has evolved over the years whereby the Apple computers are now perceived as economically competitive. The typical Macintosh operating system user would be someone looking for a balance between the graphical interactivity and OS controlling capabilities. It also serves as one of the best systems for developing multimedia projects.

Linux

It is a Unix-based (MINIX) open source operating system developed by Linus Torvalds in 1991. The last decade of development has seen the market share grow rapidly and the support obtained from large businesses such as IBM has further strengthened the growth.

It is an operating system developed by programmers for programmers on the basis of simplistic UNIX architecture, but what makes it unique is the special extrapolation of its abilities to enable varied tasks with high precision and efficiency.

The usability of Linux operating system has been enhanced through the incorporation of the user-friendly interface in the recent times in versions like Mandrake, Red Hat, Debian, Mint and so forth. On a generic level, a typical Linux operating system user would be someone who is inquisitive about the working of the computer system, weighs greater control over user-friendliness and would like to leverage user-specific programming capabilities and settings. Most programmers and hackers use Linux for their exploits.

These are not all of the operating systems that we have but I sampled out the ones that are commonly used by a lot of people. You can click here to read about the other types of operating systems that we have.

Drop your questions and suggestions in the comments box below. I hope this tutorial was very useful. Enjoy!!!