Sunday, November 18, 2007

List of Other OS

Arthur (operating system)


Arthur is an early graphical user interface (GUI) operating system (OS) that was used on Acorn ARM-cpu-based computers from about 1987 until the much-superior RISC OS 2 was completed and made available in April 1989. It was the operating system of the earliest Archimedes ARM machines.

The desktop is very primitive. It features a colour-scheme typically described as "technicolour". Its earlier revisions were very buggy, and was only really meant to be a placeholder until RISC OS 2 (a name chosen instead of Arthur 2) was completed.

The "Arthur" name was supposedly dropped from version 2 because of the release at the time of a movie called Arthur 2: On the Rocks. Arthur is said to stand for "A Risc-based operating system by THURsday". Supposedly Arthur was put together in break-neck speed because a revolutionary operating system which Acorn had under development (ARX) wasn't going to be ready in time.

Most software made for Arthur can be run under RISC OS. A few titles will not work, however.

A/UX

A/UX (from Apple Unix) was Apple Computer's implementation of the Unix operating system for some of their Macintosh computers. The later versions of A/UX ran on the Macintosh II, Quadra and Centris series of machines. A/UX was first released in 1988, with the final version (3.1.1) released in 1995. A/UX required a 68k-based Macintosh with an FPU and a paged memory management unit (PMMU).

The operating system was based on UNIX System V Release 2.2, with some additional features from System V Releases 3 and 4, and 4.2 and 4.3 BSD. It was POSIX and System V Interface Definition (SVID) compliant and included TCP/IP networking from version 2 onward. There were rumors of a later version using OSF/1 as its primary code base, but this system was never released to the public, if it even existed.

Mac OS X Server

Mac OS X Server is the server-oriented version of Apple's operating system, Mac OS X. Mac OS X, in both desktop and server versions, is a Unix operating system based on technology that Apple acquired from NeXT Computer.

The server version of Mac OS X includes applications that are intended to allow administrators to more easily manage features, such as internet-based services like email or site hosting, or manage networks of Macs and Windows PCs and provide services such as file and print sharing. Prior to Mac OS X, Apple's AppleShare software provided server applications such as file and printer sharing and user management.

Mac OS X Server leverages both open source technologies for provision of powerful standards-based services, and proprietary Apple applications for administration and for some additional services. Many services have aspects of both origins, such as Open Directory, which provides access to several open source (and external proprietary) technologies from one interface.

Lisa

The Lisa operating system featured cooperative (non-preemptive) multitasking[2] and virtual memory, then extremely advanced features for a personal computer. The use of virtual memory coupled with a fairly slow disk system made the system performance seem sluggish at times. Conceptually, the Lisa resembled the Xerox Star in the sense that it was envisioned as an office computing system; consequently, Lisa had two main user modes: the Lisa Office System and the Workshop. The Lisa Office System was the GUI environment for end users. The Workshop was a program development environment, and was almost entirely text-based, though it used a GUI text editor. The Lisa Office System was eventually renamed "7/7", in reference to the seven supplied application programs: LisaWrite, LisaCalc, LisaDraw, LisaGraph, LisaProject, LisaList, and LisaTerminal.

A significant impediment to third-party software on the Lisa was the fact that, when first launched, the Lisa could not be used to write programs for the Lisa: a separate development system was required, which was based on the same hardware but ran a version of the UNIX operating system. An engineer would run the two machines side by side, writing and compiling code on one machine and testing it on the other. Later, the same development system was used to develop software for the Macintosh. After a few years, Macintosh-native development system was developed. Judging from the "program development environment" reference in the previous paragraph, this deficiency was later remedied; but many software houses had by then already dismissed the Lisa as a target platform and did not reconsider it. For most of its lifetime, the Lisa never went beyond the original seven applications that Apple had deemed enough to do "everything."

RISC OS

RISC OS is a computer operating system originally created by British manufacturer Acorn Computers.

The operating system takes its name from the RISC architecture used on supported systems.

Linux

Linux (pronunciation: IPA: /ˈlɪnʊks/, lin-uks) is a Unix-like computer operating system. Linux is one of the most prominent examples of free software and open source development; its underlying source code can be freely modified, used, and redistributed by anyone.[1]

The Linux kernel was first released to the public on 17 September 1991, for the Intel x86 PC architecture. The kernel was augmented with system utilities and libraries from the GNU project to create a usable operating system, which later led to an alternate term, GNU/Linux.[2] Linux is now packaged for different uses in Linux distributions, which contain the sometimes modified kernel along with a variety of other software packages tailored to different requirements.

Predominantly known for its use in servers, Linux is supported by corporations such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Novell, Oracle Corporation, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems. It is used as an operating system for a wide variety of computer hardware, including desktop computers, supercomputers,[3] video game systems such as PlayStation 2, 3, several arcade games and embedded devices such as mobile phones and routers.

In 1992, Linus Torvalds explained that he pronounces Linux as /ˈlɪnʊks/,[4] though other variations are common.

AmigaOS

AmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000. It ran on the Motorola 68k series of 32-bit microprocessors, except for AmigaOS 4 which runs on PowerPC microprocessors.

On top of a preemptive multitasking kernel called Exec, it includes an abstraction of the Amiga's unique hardware, a disk operating system called AmigaDOS, a windowing system API called Intuition and a graphical user interface called Workbench. A command line interface is also available.

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