In his book A History of Modern Computing, Paul Ceruzzi states that “computers were invented to “compute”: to solve “complex mathematical problems,” as the dictionary still defines that word. They still do that, but that is not why we are living in an “Information Age.” That reflects other things that computers do: store and retrieve data, manage networks of communications, process text, generate and manipulate images and sounds, fly air and space craft, and so on. (Ceruzzi 1).” However, early electronic computers were designed basically to solve equations. The scope of how far computers would reach into our everyday lives was something that was only dreamed about in early science fiction novels.

Our textbook defines an operating system as “a program that manages the computer hardware. It also provides a basis for application programs and acts as an intermediary between a user of a computer and the computer hardware” (Silberschatz 3). However, this definition does not begin to describe how varied an operating system can be. We have operating systems that ar

“In the world of business and commerce, the electrically operated punched-card machines had become extremely fast and flexible long before they were finally abandoned, in the 1960s, for electronic devices. These calculators were also adapted, to a limited extent for scientific applications as early as the 1930s. And some privileged scientists had access to one of the few models of the electrically driven differential analyzer, a room-sized mechanical analog machine for solving differential equations that came into existence in the 1930s and endured into the 1950s (Burks 16).”

In August of 1995 Windows ’95 was released by Microsoft. Unlike the earlier versions of Windows, Windows ’95 did not need DOS to operate and therefore could be called a complete operating system. Even though it was very similar to OS/2 Warp, Windows ’95 became much more popular and dominated the market. Since then Microsoft has introduced several more versions of the very popular Windows operating system. Which include; Windows NT which was geared toward a business desktop operating system, Windows ’98 that was released as the operating system that “Works Better and Plays Better” and was geared more for the consumer, Windows ME which was a marketing disaster, Windows 2000 Professional which was built on the more reliable technology of the Windows NT code base, and the latest being Windows XP which was released in October 2001.

In a paper called A Brief History of Computing – Operating Systems, Stephen White states that in August of 1991, “Linux is born with the following post to the Usenet Newsgroup comp.os.minix: Hello everybody out there using minix- I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. The post was by a Finnish college student, Linus Torvalds, and this hobby grew from these humble beginnings into one of the most widely used UNIX-like operating systems in the world today. It now runs on many different types of computer, including the Sun SPARC and the Compaq Alpha, as well as many ARM, MIPS, PowerPC and Motorola 68000 based computers (White).”

Many operating systems have been written that have not made it in the business market and many more experimental systems are being written today. Thomas A. Edison once said, “There is always a way to do it better … find it!” As long as someone is looking for a better way, new systems will continue to be introduced in the interest of making computing easier, faster, and more reliable.

In this paper I have tried to give a brief overview of the most widely known operating systems, but by no means is this all there is, I have not even touched on such operating systems as Multics or Solaris, and there are some operating systems are written or customized to fit the environment in which they are used. If this were a detailed report of all operating systems, it would encompass an entire book.

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