Emerging Trends in OS

"Life begins with a disk drive." - Tim Paterson

From the first Operating System ever built: OS/360  to the latest OSes like Windows and Mac OS everything has changed in terms of memory,  speed , graphics and cost. But one thing remains in common, it was 0 and 1’s in the past its still is 0 and 1’s.

Talking about the leading computer brand Microsoft . Microsoft developed its first Operating Environment  : MS-DOS , in the mid 1980’s. MS-DOS only read text as CLI (character line interface) i.e – sentences in the form of commands. It was a single user OS, supported single tasking, did not support networking. The main and the most important feature was transparency.

Now talking about the windows line of OSes . First came Windows 1.0 & Windows 2.0. Windows 1.0 was a 16-bit operating Environment. It was an upgraded version as it was the first attempt to a multi-tasking GUI (Graphic User Interface).  Windows 2.0 was the successor of windows 1.0 which introduced some more sophisticated shortcuts, and also the terminology of “Minimize” and “Maximize”.

Then came Windows 3.0 . The first OS which introduced the concept of virtual memory. Parallel to these up-gradations by Microsoft, Mac OS was also gaining popularity because of its GUI design and shared application framework for compatibility, and that too with different architectures.

Here we see that the years from 1980-1990 saw drastic changes in OSes. Single user system were upgraded to multi-user . The feature of control panel was introduced. OSes were now more User-friendly.

Next came Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows ME. These Oses were more of consumer oriented versions which were codenamed “Chicago”. Windows 95 released in 1995 worked on a 32-bit OS which was cheaper and faster as compared to the older versions of windows. It had added feature like handling physical devices such as video and network cards or providing user with various system services. Same was in the case of Windows 98 &ME, up-gradations and new concepts were used to enhance the performance of PC’s. The most important feature which had been updated was the network media. TCI/IPNetwork enhancement were  introduced in windows 98.

Finally Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and the latest Windows 8 came in the market. Windows XP came up with ClearType subpixel rendering which provides the users to make onscreen fonts smoother and more readable on LCD screens. Windows Vista was further added with Gadgets to the side of the users desktop. Like wise in the case of Windows 7 and Windows 8 , internet explorer , start menu and several other features were upgraded so as to make them more reliable and User friendly.

This was just a brief account of how OSes of Microsoft have been revised to make them fit for the present machines. Over the years OSes  have  shown distinct improvement in every field of computing because of which every Computer today has an Operating System working for it.