Evolution of operating systems
Going back to the history of operating systems, they had to go through several generations to become what we know today.
Initially, from the 1950s, the first generation consisted of a computer operating by means of plug-in boards.
The second generation was improved by means of batch work, in which the operator always performed a sequence of repetitive steps, which is one of the main characteristics taken into account in the definition of what is meant by operating system.
In the third generation, one of the first operating systems was born, whose main purpose was to manage a family of computers.
During this period there were many conflicts, because previously, computers had been created for two main purposes: commercial and scientific.
But now that there was only one operating system for computers, which could be dedicated to one purpose, the other or both, logically this created problems, because it began to show the work in teams of analysis, design and implementation of much larger systems.
In the fourth generation, electronics began to make great advances in this field, creating circuits with thousands of transistors in a square centimeter of silicon. With this new project, it was possible to start talking about personal computers and workstations.
In the mid-1980s, the rise of computer networks began and the need to create distributed operating systems arose.
The World Wide Web became accessible to all kinds of institutions and solutions to problems began to be developed, especially when it was desired to make resources residing on computers with different operating systems coexist, making use of IP addresses.
In the 1990s, object-oriented programming gained importance, as did the management of objects from operating systems. The aim is to create applications, executed on a specific platform and then see the results on the screen or monitor of a completely different one.
Looking at the whole development process, through which the operating system had to pass, to become as such, we can see that it was not so easy, it had to go through several generations, who at the time, were doing increasingly deeper studies, to be able to develop a technology as advanced as the one we have today, with that agility, speed and versatility, being one of the most used systems worldwide, becoming part of our daily lives.
According to this new development, we can define «the operating system» as an essential part of any computer system.
This system is divided into 4 components: The hardware, the operating system, the application programs and the users.
Finally, operating systems are a fundamental part of computer systems, so the use of any of them will depend on the applications we want to run, their security levels, stability, users that will use it, hardware to be used, etc.
This article is part of the knowledge diffusion system of ITSoftware SAS.
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