Forth Generation of Operating Systems

An important phase in history was the set of Forth Generation of Operating Systems.

The development of high-integration circuits made it possible that the chips could contain thousands of transistors per square centimeter. Being cheap in price, minicomputers were affordable for a department in a company, university, or even an individual could have their own personal computer.

In 1974, when Intel came up with the 8080 variant, an operating system was required to test it. At this time was created an 8-inch floppy disk.

The starting of DOS

In the 1980s, IBM designed the IBM PC and was looking for software to run it. IBM employees contacted Bill Gates for a license for Basic Interpreter. They also asked him if he knew of any operating system running on the PC.

Gates suggested contacting Digital Research, which was the world’s leader in operating systems. A terrible decision in business history was when the founder of Digital Research, Gary Kidlall, refused to meet IBM representatives and send them one of the employees. The issue got worse when Digital Research’s lawyer declined to sign the contract with IBM.

IBM then turned to Bill Gates and asked him if he had any other option with any operating system. Gates knew that Seattle Computer Products had an operating system suitable for DOS (Disk Operating System). He bought this for $ 50,000. Gates offered IBM the DOS / Basic package. IBM wanted modifications; then Gates asked the person who wrote DOS to modify it and hired him into Microsoft’s newly created company.

The modifications were renamed MS-DOS and soon became dominant in the market. It was one of the most used of the Forth Generation of Operating Systems.

Later versions of MS-DOS were 80386 and 80486. Although its earlier versions were primitive, later versions contained many additional options taken from Unix. MS-DOS and other operating systems were based on the commands the user typed from the keyboard. Doug Engelbart created the interface we use now. So was designed the GIU (Graphical User Interface), which uses windows, icons, menus, and mouse.

Launching Macintosh

Steve Jobs, one of the founders of Apple Computer, decided to build an Apple with a GUI. This project was called Lisa, but it was too expensive and failed in the market. Jobs’ second attempt was Apple Macintosh. It was a success not only because it was free but also because it was user-friendly, and it was created for people who had no idea about computers.

When Microsoft decided to build the next version of MS-DOS, it was influenced by the success of Macintosh. He built a GUI called Windows, which was based on MS-DOS. During 1985-1993 Windows was simply a graphical interface of MS-DOS. In 1995 was launched the standalone version of Windows 1995, followed by Windows 98. Both versions of Windows contained large amounts of code in the 16-bit Intel assembler.

Unix operating system

Another powerful operating system is Unix. On Pentium-based computers, Linux has become an alternative to Windows. Even though many Unix users, especially those with a lot of experience, prefer a command-line interface, almost all Unix systems support a windows-based system called X Windows. This system contains windows management and user creation. A GUI interface called Motif allows Unix to resemble Macintosh or Microsoft Windows.

Network Operating Systems

The evolution of networks during the 1980s led to the evolution of network operating systems and distributed operating systems. In such an operating system, users are aware of many computers and can log on to one machine on the network, copy files from one machine to another. Each machine runs the local operating system and has its own users.

Network operating systems are essentially not very much different from single-processor systems. Obviously, these systems need the network interface controller and the software that controls them.

Distributed Operating systems

A distributed operating system resembles the user as a traditional system, although it is composed of many processors. Users should not be aware of where their programs will run or where their files are located. All of this effectively handles the exploitation system.

Distributed operating systems require more than one code addition to a single-processor system because distributed and centralized systems differ in many critical respects. For example, distributed systems allow applications to run on multiple processors at the same time. This requires more complex scheduling algorithms to improve parallelism.

For more details about the previous generation, follow the link: Third Generation of Operating Systems