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Comparison of operating systems

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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These tables provide a comparison of operating systems, of computer devices, as listing general and technical information for a number of widely used and currently available PC or handheld (including smartphone and tablet computer) operating systems. The article "Usage share of operating systems" provides a broader, and more general, comparison of operating systems that includes servers, mainframes and supercomputers.

Because of the large number and variety of available Linux distributions, they are all grouped under a single entry; see comparison of Linux distributions for a detailed comparison. There is also a variety of BSD and DOS operating systems, covered in comparison of BSD operating systems and comparison of DOS operating systems.

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Nomenclature

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The nomenclature for operating systems varies among providers and sometimes within providers. For purposes of this article the terms used are;

kernel
In some operating systems, the OS is split into a low level region called the kernel and higher level code that relies on the kernel. Typically the kernel implements processes but its code does not run as part of a process.[disputed – discuss]
hybrid kernel
monolithic kernel
Nucleus
In some operating systems there is OS code permanently present in a contiguous region of memory addressable by unprivileged code; in IBM systems this is typically referred to as the nucleus. The nucleus typically contains both code that requires special privileges and code that can run in an unprivileged state. Typically some code in the nucleus runs in the context of a dispatching unit, e.g., address space, process, task, thread, while other code runs independent of any dispatching unit. In contemporary operating systems unprivileged applications cannot alter the nucleus.

License and pricing policies also vary among different systems. The tables below use the following terms:

BSD
BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software.
bundled
The fee is included in the price of the hardware
bundled initially
The fee is included in the price of the hardware but upgrades require an additional fee.
GPL2
GPL3
Per user
The fee depends on the maximum number of users concurrently logged on.
MSU
The fee depends on the resources consumed by the user
MULC
Measured Usage License Charges
PSLC
Parallel Sysplex Software Pricing
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General information

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More information Name, Creator ...
  1. [g 1]
    Most OS distributions include bundled software with various other licenses.
  2. [g 2]
    "Hungarian". The Original Macintosh Anecdotes.. Although Lisa OS ran on the same, but a slower variant, microprocessor and was developed by Apple Computer Inc. at the same time as Classic Mac OS, they were developed as different projects, only sharing a similar GUI between them.
  3. [g 3]
    Mac OS 7.6 was the first Macintosh system software to be labeled Mac OS. Operating systems before this were named Macintosh System Software through System Software 7.5, and known as System #.# for short.
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Technical information

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More information Name, Computer architectures supported ...
  1. [t 1]
    Operating systems where the GUI is not installed and turned on by default are often bundled with an implementation of the X Window System, installation of which is usually optional.
  2. [t 2]
    Most operating systems use proprietary APIs in addition to any supported standards.
  3. [t 3]
    Amiga OS features since OS 2.0 version a standard centralized Install utility called Installer, which could be used by any software house to install programs. It works as a Lisp language interpreter, and install procedures could be listed as simple text. AmigaOS can also benefit from a 3rd party copyrighted library called XAD that is available for all POSIX (Unix, Linux, BSD, and for AmigaOS, MorphOS, etc.). This library is freely distributable and publicly available on Aminet Amiga centralized repository of all Open Source or Free programs and utilities. XAD.Library, complete with GUI Voodoo-X, is based on modules and capable to manage over 300 compression methods and package systems (Voodoo-X GUI supports 80 package systems), including those widely accepted as standards such as .ZIP, .CAB, .LHA, .LZX, .RPM, etc.
  4. [t 4]
    A standard AmigaOS installation requires usually only few files (typically 3 to 10 files) to be copied in their appropriate directory, and libraries and language files for national localization to be put in their standard OS directories. Any Amiga user with some minimal experience knows where these files should be copied and could perform programs installations by hand.
  5. [t 5]
    AmiUpdate can update AmigaOS files and all Amiga programs which are registered to use the same update program that is standard for Amiga. Updating AmigaOS requires only few libraries to be put in standard OS location (for example all libraries are stored in Libs: standard virtual device and absolute path finder for Libs directory, Fonts are all in Fonts: absolute locator, the files for language localization are all stored in Locale: and so on). This leaves Amiga users with a minimal knowledge of the system almost free to perform by hand the update of the system files.
  6. [t 6]
    using Wine
  7. [t 7]
    NetBSD and OpenBSD include the X Window System as base install sets, managed in their respective main source repository, including local modifications. Packages are also provided for more up-to-date versions which may be less tested.
  8. [t 8]
    "BrandZ (Community Group brandz.WebHome) - XWiki". Opensolaris.org. October 26, 2009. Archived from the original on September 29, 2009. Retrieved December 18, 2011.
  9. [t 9]
    only i686 CPU
  10. [T 10]
    Windows can read and write with Ext2 and Ext3 file systems only when a driver from FS-driver or Ext2Fsd is installed. However, using Explore2fs, Windows can read from, but not write to, Ext2 and Ext3 file systems. Windows can also access ReiserFS through rfstool and related programs.
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Security

More information Name, Resourceaccess control ...
  1. [s 1]
    Comparison of known unpatched vulnerabilities based on Secunia & SecurityFocus reports with severity of Not critical & above. Update lists manually with oldest published date(s).
  2. [s 2]
    AIX use the PowerPC architecture which offer page-level protection mechanism. Since AIX version 5300-03 (5.3), this feature can be activated using the sedmgr command.
  3. [s 3]
    The GCC stack protection (a.k.a. ProPolice stack-smashing protector) has been enabled in base system since FreeBSD 8.0-release.
  4. [s 4]
    Support for the 1997 withdrawn POSIX ACL draft is included in Linux 2.6, but requires a file system able to store them (such as ext3, XFS or ReiserFS).
  5. [s 5]
    A jail mechanism is available separately in the Linux-VServer project, but is not integrated into any mainline Linux kernel.
  6. [s 6]
    ACLs were added to Mac OS X starting with version 10.4.
  7. [s 7]
    ACLs are available only in OS/2 Server versions with HPFS386 filesystem.
  8. [s 8]
    Additionally swap space may be encrypted during installation, uses memory based tmp file storage by default.
  9. [s 9]
    "Solaris Containers" (including "Zones") are a jail-type mechanism introduced with Solaris 10.
  10. [S 10]
    Through ZFS
  11. [S 11]
    Zeta has full Unix file permissions, but the OS is single user, and users always run as superuser.
  12. [S 12]
    STOP 6 is certified under Common Criteria at EAL5+.
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Commands

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For POSIX compliant (or partly compliant) systems like FreeBSD, Linux, macOS or Solaris, the basic commands are the same because they are standardized.

More information Feature, AROS ...

NOTE: Linux systems may vary by distribution which specific program, or even 'command' is called, via the POSIX alias function. For example, if you wanted to use the DOS dir to give you a directory listing with one detailed file listing per line you could use alias dir='ls -lahF' (e.g. in a session configuration file).

  1. [c 1]
    May be omitted. Simply entering the directory name will change to it.
  2. [c 2]
    This feature is still in development, see .
  3. [c 3]
    The nice command utilizes the setpriority() system call, which affects I/O priority, see OS X man page .
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See also

Operating system comparisons

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References

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External links

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