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Time Sharing Operating System

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79-594: Time Sharing Operating System , or TSOS , is a discontinued operating system for RCA mainframe computers of the Spectra 70 series. TSOS was originally designed in 1968 for the Spectra 70/46, a modified version of the 70/45. TSOS quickly evolved into the Virtual Memory Operating System ( VMOS ) by 1970. VMOS continued to be supported on the later RCA 3 and RCA 7 computer systems. RCA

158-706: A boot floppy or the CD itself would boot specifically, and only, to install onto a hard drive. Early examples of operating systems which could be booted directly from CD-ROM are the FM Towns OS , and the Desktop-VMS distribution of VMS , both of which were first released in 1989. Although early developers and users of distributions built on top of the Linux kernel could take advantage of cheap optical disks and rapidly declining prices of CD drives for personal computers,

237-428: A system call to perform a block I/O write operation, then the system call might execute the following instructions: While the writing takes place, the operating system will context switch to other processes as normal. When the device finishes writing, the device will interrupt the currently running process by asserting an interrupt request . The device will also place an integer onto the data bus. Upon accepting

316-458: A CD to support "live" operations might have been the AmigaOS , which could be booted from CD on an Amiga CDTV in 1990. . Earlier examples of live OS are of course the operating systems used from floppy, and most widely spread is DOS . Unlike previous operating systems on optical media, though, Linux and OS/2 "live CDs" were specifically designed to run without installation onto other media like

395-625: A USB drive, a network drive, or other accessible media. Live backup CDs can create an image of drives, and back up files, without problems due to open files and inconsistent sets. A few additional uses include: Several live CDs are dedicated to specific type of applications according to the requirements of thematic user communities. These CDs are tailored to the needs of the applications in subject including general knowledge, tutorial, specifications and trial data too. Some of these topics covers sub topics, e.g. IT administration breaks down to firewall, rescue, security, etc. type of live CDs. In some cases

474-645: A computer even if they are not compatible with the base operating system. A library operating system (libOS) is one in which the services that a typical operating system provides, such as networking, are provided in the form of libraries and composed with a single application and configuration code to construct a unikernel : a specialized (only the absolute necessary pieces of code are extracted from libraries and bound together ), single address space , machine image that can be deployed to cloud or embedded environments. The operating system code and application code are not executed in separated protection domains (there

553-585: A development of MULTICS for a single user. Because UNIX's source code was available, it became the basis of other, incompatible operating systems, of which the most successful were AT&T 's System V and the University of California 's Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). To increase compatibility, the IEEE released the POSIX standard for operating system application programming interfaces (APIs), which

632-521: A hard disk drive. A live CD allows users to run an operating system for any purpose without installing it or making any changes to the computer's configuration. Live CDs can run on a computer without secondary storage , such as a hard disk drive, or with a corrupted hard disk drive or file system, allowing data recovery . As CD and DVD drives have been steadily phased-out, live CDs have become less popular, being replaced by live USBs , which are equivalent systems written onto USB flash drives , which have

711-753: A hard disk drive. The live CD concept was meant to promote Linux and showcase the abilities of the free, open source operating system on conventional personal computers with Microsoft Windows already installed. On a PC , a bootable Compact Disc generally conforms to the El Torito specification, introduced in 1994. Many Linux based live CDs use a compressed filesystem image, often with the cloop compressed loopback driver, or squashfs compressed filesystem, generally doubling effective storage capacity, although slowing application start up . The resulting environment can be quite rich: typical Knoppix systems include around 1,200 separate software packages. Live CDs have

790-484: A large legal settlement was paid. In the twenty-first century, Windows continues to be popular on personal computers but has less market share of servers. UNIX operating systems, especially Linux, are the most popular on enterprise systems and servers but are also used on mobile devices and many other computer systems. On mobile devices, Symbian OS was dominant at first, being usurped by BlackBerry OS (introduced 2002) and iOS for iPhones (from 2007). Later on,

869-442: A library with no protection between applications, such as eCos . A hypervisor is an operating system that runs a virtual machine . The virtual machine is unaware that it is an application and operates as if it had its own hardware. Virtual machines can be paused, saved, and resumed, making them useful for operating systems research, development, and debugging. They also enhance portability by enabling applications to be run on

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948-447: A license to use. Many live CDs are used for data recovery, computer forensics , disk imaging , system recovery and malware removal. The Tails operating system is aimed at preserving privacy and anonymity of its users, allowing them to work with sensitive documents without leaving a record on a computer's hard drive. All computers except the earliest digital computers are built with some form of minimal built-in loader, which loads

1027-447: A malformed machine instruction . However, the most common error conditions are division by zero and accessing an invalid memory address . Users can send messages to the kernel to modify the behavior of a currently running process. For example, in the command-line environment , pressing the interrupt character (usually Control-C ) might terminate the currently running process. To generate software interrupts for x86 CPUs,

1106-745: A medium for storing and distributing large amounts of computer data. This data may also include application and operating-system software, sometimes packaged and archived in compressed formats. Later, it was seen to be convenient and useful to boot the computer directly from compact disc, often with a minimal working system to install a full system onto a hard drive. While there are read-write optical discs, either mass-produced read-only discs or write-once discs were used for this purpose. The first Compact Disc drives on personal computers were generally much too slow to run complex operating systems; computers were not designed to boot from an optical disc . When operating systems came to be distributed on compact discs, either

1185-823: A new session to the boot medium persisting through subsequent boots. The term "Live CD" came to be used for any CD containing operating system and software which could be run without installation on the host computer. Operating systems which can be used live include AmigaOS 4 , Amithlon , AROS , FreeBSD , FreeDOS , classic Mac OS , macOS , Microsoft Windows installation and repair discs, OS/2 , ReactOS , NetBSD , OpenBSD , MINIX 3 , Plan 9 from Bell Labs , MorphOS , OpenSolaris , BeleniX and others based on Solaris . There are maintenance versions of Microsoft Windows bootable from CD such as BartPE , Windows PE , and Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT), previously known as Emergency Repair Disk Commander (ERD Commander). The first personal computer operating system on

1264-442: A particular Live DVD covers more than one topic. Packaging a software appliance as an installable live CD, or live ISO, can often be beneficial as a single image can run on both real hardware and on most types of virtual machines. This allows developers to avoid the complexities involved in supporting multiple incompatible virtual machine images formats and focus on the lowest common denominator instead. Typically after booting

1343-455: A particular application's memory is stored, or even whether or not it has been allocated yet. In modern operating systems, memory which is accessed less frequently can be temporarily stored on a disk or other media to make that space available for use by other programs. This is called swapping , as an area of memory can be used by multiple programs, and what that memory area contains can be swapped or exchanged on demand. Virtual memory provides

1422-417: A particular operating system or version is compatible with a particular hardware configuration and certain peripherals, or as a way to know beforehand which computer or peripheral will work before buying. A live CD can be used to troubleshoot hardware, especially when a hard drive fails, and more generally as a recovery disc in case of problems. Some live CDs can save user-created files in a Windows partition,

1501-503: A program does not interfere with memory already in use by another program. Since programs time share, each program must have independent access to memory. Cooperative memory management, used by many early operating systems, assumes that all programs make voluntary use of the kernel 's memory manager, and do not exceed their allocated memory. This system of memory management is almost never seen any more, since programs often contain bugs which can cause them to exceed their allocated memory. If

1580-408: A program fails, it may cause memory used by one or more other programs to be affected or overwritten. Malicious programs or viruses may purposefully alter another program's memory, or may affect the operation of the operating system itself. With cooperative memory management, it takes only one misbehaved program to crash the system. Memory protection enables the kernel to limit a process' access to

1659-400: A program or succession of programs from a storage medium, which then operate the computer. Initially a read-only medium such as punched tape or punched cards was used for initial program load. With the introduction of inexpensive read-write storage, read-write floppy disks and hard disks were used as boot media . After the introduction of the audio compact disc , it was adapted for use as

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1738-440: A program tries to access memory that is not accessible memory, but nonetheless has been allocated to it, the kernel is interrupted (see § Memory management ) . This kind of interrupt is typically a page fault . When the kernel detects a page fault it generally adjusts the virtual memory range of the program which triggered it, granting it access to the memory requested. This gives the kernel discretionary power over where

1817-402: A read-only file system is merged with a RAM drive using transparent techniques such as UnionFS , AuFS or EWF . Boot loaders like syslinux can boot ISO files from USB memory devices. Live CDs have to be able to detect and use a wide variety of hardware (including network cards , graphic cards etc.) in realtime, often using facilities such as udev , hotplug , hal, udisk etc.. which are

1896-422: A reputation for supporting advanced auto-configuration and plug-and-play functionality. This came out of necessity to avoid requiring the user to configure the system each time it boots and to make it easily usable by those who are new to the operating system. A read-only file system , such as on a CD-ROM has the drawback of being unable to save any current working data. For this reason, a read-only file system

1975-470: A significant amount of CPU time. Direct memory access (DMA) is an architecture feature to allow devices to bypass the CPU and access main memory directly. (Separate from the architecture, a device may perform direct memory access to and from main memory either directly or via a bus.) When a computer user types a key on the keyboard, typically the character appears immediately on the screen. Likewise, when

2054-402: A specific moment in time. Hard real-time systems require exact timing and are common in manufacturing , avionics , military, and other similar uses. With soft real-time systems, the occasional missed event is acceptable; this category often includes audio or multimedia systems, as well as smartphones. In order for hard real-time systems be sufficiently exact in their timing, often they are just

2133-423: A system which is not functioning normally due to operating system and software issues can be made available; for example, data can be recovered from a machine with an active virus infection without the virus process being active and causing more damage, and the virus can be removed with its defences against removal bypassed. Although some live CDs can load into memory to free the optical drive for other uses, loading

2212-417: A user moves a mouse , the cursor immediately moves across the screen. Each keystroke and mouse movement generates an interrupt called Interrupt-driven I/O . An interrupt-driven I/O occurs when a process causes an interrupt for every character or word transmitted. Devices such as hard disk drives , solid-state drives , and magnetic tape drives can transfer data at a rate high enough that interrupting

2291-406: A user typically may resort to using one or more boot codes to change the booting behavior. These vary from distribution to distribution but can most often be accessed upon first boot screen by one of the function keys . Some live CDs come with an installation utility launchable from a desktop icon that can optionally install the system on a hard drive or USB flash drive . Most live CDs can access

2370-453: A variation of the classic reader/writer problem . The writer receives a pipe from the shell for its output to be sent to the reader's input stream. The command-line syntax is alpha | bravo . alpha will write to the pipe when its computation is ready and then sleep in the wait queue. bravo will then be moved to the ready queue and soon will read from its input stream. The kernel will generate software interrupts to coordinate

2449-410: A volume. After mounting the live CD's filesystem, software on the live CD can be run directly, without booting it, by chrooting into the mounted filesystem. A live CD ISO image can also be mounted by Virtual Machine software such as VirtualBox and VMware Workstation or can be converted to a Live USB using SYSLINUX . Special tools can automate this process. During live CD initialization,

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2528-562: Is remote direct memory access , which enables each CPU to access memory belonging to other CPUs. Multicomputer operating systems often support remote procedure calls where a CPU can call a procedure on another CPU, or distributed shared memory , in which the operating system uses virtualization to generate shared memory that does not physically exist. A distributed system is a group of distinct, networked computers—each of which might have their own operating system and file system. Unlike multicomputers, they may be dispersed anywhere in

2607-428: Is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common services for computer programs . Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also include accounting software for cost allocation of processor time , mass storage , peripherals, and other resources. For hardware functions such as input and output and memory allocation ,

2686-484: Is a change away from the currently running process. Similarly, both hardware and software interrupts execute an interrupt service routine . Software interrupts may be normally occurring events. It is expected that a time slice will occur, so the kernel will have to perform a context switch . A computer program may set a timer to go off after a few seconds in case too much data causes an algorithm to take too long. Software interrupts may be error conditions, such as

2765-422: Is difficult to define, but has been called "the layer of software that manages a computer's resources for its users and their applications ". Operating systems include the software that is always running, called a kernel —but can include other software as well. The two other types of programs that can run on a computer are system programs —which are associated with the operating system, but may not be part of

2844-440: Is often merged with a temporary writable file system in the form of a RAM disk . Often the default Linux directories " /home " (containing users' personal files and configuration files ) and " /var " (containing variable data ) are kept in ramdisk, because the system updates them frequently. Puppy Linux and some other live CDs allow a configuration and added files to be written and used in later sessions. In modern live CDs,

2923-443: Is only a single application running, at least conceptually, so there is no need to prevent interference between applications) and OS services are accessed via simple library calls (potentially inlining them based on compiler thresholds), without the usual overhead of context switches , in a way similarly to embedded and real-time OSes. Note that this overhead is not negligible: to the direct cost of mode switching it's necessary to add

3002-478: Is still offered by Fujitsu and used by their mainframe customers primarily in Germany and other European countries. As the name suggests, TSOS provided time sharing features. Similar to CTSS it provided a common user interface for both time sharing and batch , which was a big advantage over IBM 's OS/360 or its successors MVS , OS/390 and z/OS . Operating system An operating system ( OS )

3081-499: Is supported by most UNIX systems. MINIX was a stripped-down version of UNIX, developed in 1987 for educational uses, that inspired the commercially available, free software Linux . Since 2008, MINIX is used in controllers of most Intel microchips , while Linux is widespread in data centers and Android smartphones. The invention of large scale integration enabled the production of personal computers (initially called microcomputers ) from around 1980. For around five years,

3160-473: Is that they do not load user-installed software. Consequently, they do not need protection between different applications, enabling simpler designs. Very small operating systems might run in less than 10 kilobytes , and the smallest are for smart cards . Examples include Embedded Linux , QNX , VxWorks , and the extra-small systems RIOT and TinyOS . A real-time operating system is an operating system that guarantees to process events or data by or at

3239-404: Is the oldest Live CD still in production. Knoppix , a Debian -derived Linux distribution, was released in 2003, and found popularity as both a rescue disk system and as a primary distribution in its own right. Since 2003, the popularity of live CDs has increased substantially, partly due to Linux Live scripts and remastersys , which made it very easy to build customized live systems. Most of

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3318-435: Is the part of the operating system that provides protection between different applications and users. This protection is key to improving reliability by keeping errors isolated to one program, as well as security by limiting the power of malicious software and protecting private data, and ensuring that one program cannot monopolize the computer's resources. Most operating systems have two modes of operation: in user mode ,

3397-542: The CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers) was the most popular operating system for microcomputers. Later, IBM bought the DOS (Disk Operating System) from Microsoft . After modifications requested by IBM, the resulting system was called MS-DOS (MicroSoft Disk Operating System) and was widely used on IBM microcomputers. Later versions increased their sophistication, in part by borrowing features from UNIX. Apple 's Macintosh

3476-504: The INT assembly language instruction is available. The syntax is INT X , where X is the offset number (in hexadecimal format) to the interrupt vector table . To generate software interrupts in Unix-like operating systems, the kill(pid,signum) system call will send a signal to another process. pid is the process identifier of the receiving process. signum is

3555-502: The Linux distribution CDs or "distros" were generally treated as a collection of installation packages that would first need to be permanently installed to hard disks on the target machine. However, in the case of these distributions built on top of the Linux kernel, the free operating system was meeting resistance in the consumer market because of the perceived difficulty, effort, and risk involved in installing an additional partition on

3634-498: The personal computer market, as of September 2024 , Microsoft Windows holds a dominant market share of around 73%. macOS by Apple Inc. is in second place (15%), Linux is in third place (5%), and ChromeOS is in fourth place (2%). In the mobile sector (including smartphones and tablets ), as of September 2023 , Android's share is 68.92%, followed by Apple's iOS and iPadOS with 30.42%, and other operating systems with .66%. Linux distributions are dominant in

3713-420: The transistor in the mid-1950s, mainframes began to be built. These still needed professional operators who manually do what a modern operating system would do, such as scheduling programs to run, but mainframes still had rudimentary operating systems such as Fortran Monitor System (FMS) and IBSYS . In the 1960s, IBM introduced the first series of intercompatible computers ( System/360 ). All of them ran

3792-410: The CPU for every byte or word transferred, and having the CPU transfer the byte or word between the device and memory, would require too much CPU time. Data is, instead, transferred between the device and memory independently of the CPU by hardware such as a channel or a direct memory access controller; an interrupt is delivered only when all the data is transferred. If a computer program executes

3871-474: The CPU to re-enter supervisor mode , placing the kernel in charge. This is called a segmentation violation or Seg-V for short, and since it is both difficult to assign a meaningful result to such an operation, and because it is usually a sign of a misbehaving program, the kernel generally resorts to terminating the offending program, and reports the error. Windows versions 3.1 through ME had some level of memory protection, but programs could easily circumvent

3950-449: The added benefit of having writeable storage. The functionality of a live CD is also available with an external hard disk drive connected by USB. Many live CDs offer the option of persistence by writing files to a hard drive or USB flash drive. Many Linux distributions make ISO images available for burning to CD or DVD. While open source operating systems can be used for free, some commercial software, such as Windows To Go requires

4029-538: The application program, which then interacts with the user and with hardware devices. However, in some systems an application can request that the operating system execute another application within the same process, either as a subroutine or in a separate thread, e.g., the LINK and ATTACH facilities of OS/360 and successors . An interrupt (also known as an abort , exception , fault , signal , or trap ) provides an efficient way for most operating systems to react to

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4108-453: The computer's memory. Various methods of memory protection exist, including memory segmentation and paging . All methods require some level of hardware support (such as the 80286 MMU), which does not exist in all computers. In both segmentation and paging, certain protected mode registers specify to the CPU what memory address it should allow a running program to access. Attempts to access other addresses trigger an interrupt, which causes

4187-412: The data from a CD-ROM is still slower than a typical hard drive boot, so this is rarely the default with large live CD images, but for smaller live CD images loading the filesystem directly into RAM can provide a significant performance boost, as RAM is much faster than a hard drive, and uses less power. Experienced users of the operating system may also use a live CD to determine whether and to what extent

4266-471: The details of how interrupt service routines behave vary from operating system to operating system. However, several interrupt functions are common. The architecture and operating system must: A software interrupt is a message to a process that an event has occurred. This contrasts with a hardware interrupt — which is a message to the central processing unit (CPU) that an event has occurred. Software interrupts are similar to hardware interrupts — there

4345-422: The environment. Interrupts cause the central processing unit (CPU) to have a control flow change away from the currently running program to an interrupt handler , also known as an interrupt service routine (ISR). An interrupt service routine may cause the central processing unit (CPU) to have a context switch . The details of how a computer processes an interrupt vary from architecture to architecture, and

4424-458: The hard disk, in parallel with an existing operating system installation. The term "live CD" was coined because, after typical PC RAM was large enough and 52x speed CD drives and CD burners were widespread among PC owners, it finally became convenient and practical to boot the kernel and run X11 , a window manager and GUI applications directly from a CD without disturbing the OS on the hard disk. This

4503-410: The hardware checks that the software is only executing legal instructions, whereas the kernel has unrestricted powers and is not subject to these checks. The kernel also manages memory for other processes and controls access to input/output devices. The operating system provides an interface between an application program and the computer hardware, so that an application program can interact with

4582-493: The hardware only by obeying rules and procedures programmed into the operating system. The operating system is also a set of services which simplify development and execution of application programs. Executing an application program typically involves the creation of a process by the operating system kernel , which assigns memory space and other resources, establishes a priority for the process in multi-tasking systems, loads program binary code into memory, and initiates execution of

4661-418: The indirect pollution of important processor structures (like CPU caches , the instruction pipeline , and so on) which affects both user-mode and kernel-mode performance. The first computers in the late 1940s and 1950s were directly programmed either with plugboards or with machine code inputted on media such as punch cards , without programming languages or operating systems. After the introduction of

4740-489: The information on internal and/or external hard drives, diskettes and USB flash drives. Live CDs are usually distributed on read-only media, requiring either copying to rewriteable media (i.e. a hard drive or CD writer) or complete remastering to install additional software; however, there are exceptions. If Puppy Linux is recorded to an open multisession medium, changes made during use (such as files created, programs installed, and preferences customised) are written in

4819-404: The interrupt request, the operating system will: When the writing process has its time slice expired, the operating system will: With the program counter now reset, the interrupted process will resume its time slice. Among other things, a multiprogramming operating system kernel must be responsible for managing all system memory which is currently in use by the programs. This ensures that

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4898-431: The kernel—and applications—all other software. There are three main purposes that an operating system fulfills: With multiprocessors multiple CPUs share memory. A multicomputer or cluster computer has multiple CPUs, each of which has its own memory . Multicomputers were developed because large multiprocessors are difficult to engineer and prohibitively expensive; they are universal in cloud computing because of

4977-584: The machine from the live CD, the appliance either runs in non-persistent demo mode or installs itself, at the user's request, to an available storage device. The files on a live CD ISO image can be accessed in Microsoft Windows with a disk image emulator such as Daemon Tools , or in Unix variants by mounting a loop device . Later versions of Windows (i.e. Windows 8 and later), and software available for earlier versions, allow an ISO to be mounted as

5056-400: The memory allocated to a different one. Around the same time, teleprinters began to be used as terminals so multiple users could access the computer simultaneously. The operating system MULTICS was intended to allow hundreds of users to access a large computer. Despite its limited adoption, it can be considered the precursor to cloud computing . The UNIX operating system originated as

5135-408: The need to use it. A general protection fault would be produced, indicating a segmentation violation had occurred; however, the system would often crash anyway. The use of virtual memory addressing (such as paging or segmentation) means that the kernel can choose what memory each program may use at any given time, allowing the operating system to use the same memory locations for multiple tasks. If

5214-408: The open-source Android operating system (introduced 2008), with a Linux kernel and a C library ( Bionic ) partially based on BSD code, became most popular. The components of an operating system are designed to ensure that various parts of a computer function cohesively. With the de facto obsoletion of DOS , all user software must interact with the operating system to access hardware. The kernel

5293-420: The operating system acts as an intermediary between programs and the computer hardware, although the application code is usually executed directly by the hardware and frequently makes system calls to an OS function or is interrupted by it. Operating systems are found on many devices that contain a computer – from cellular phones and video game consoles to web servers and supercomputers . In

5372-421: The piping. Signals may be classified into 7 categories. The categories are: Input/output (I/O) devices are slower than the CPU. Therefore, it would slow down the computer if the CPU had to wait for each I/O to finish. Instead, a computer may implement interrupts for I/O completion, avoiding the need for polling or busy waiting. Some computers require an interrupt for each character or word, costing

5451-427: The popular Linux distributions now include a live CD variant, which in some cases is also the preferred installation medium. Live CDs are made for many different uses. Some are designed to demonstrate or "test drive" a particular operating system (usually Linux or another free or open source operating system). Software can be tested, or run for a particular single use, without interfering with system setup. Data on

5530-406: The programmer or the user with the perception that there is a much larger amount of RAM in the computer than is really there. Live CD A live CD (also live DVD , live disc , or live operating system ) is a complete bootable computer installation including operating system which runs directly from a CD-ROM or similar storage device into a computer's memory, rather than loading from

5609-418: The same operating system— OS/360 —which consisted of millions of lines of assembly language that had thousands of bugs . The OS/360 also was the first popular operating system to support multiprogramming , such that the CPU could be put to use on one job while another was waiting on input/output (I/O). Holding multiple jobs in memory necessitated memory partitioning and safeguards against one job accessing

5688-619: The server and supercomputing sectors. Other specialized classes of operating systems (special-purpose operating systems), such as embedded and real-time systems, exist for many applications. Security-focused operating systems also exist. Some operating systems have low system requirements (e.g. light-weight Linux distribution ). Others may have higher system requirements. Some operating systems require installation or may come pre-installed with purchased computers ( OEM -installation), whereas others may run directly from media (i.e. live CD ) or flash memory (i.e. USB stick). An operating system

5767-400: The signal number (in mnemonic format) to be sent. (The abrasive name of kill was chosen because early implementations only terminated the process.) In Unix-like operating systems, signals inform processes of the occurrence of asynchronous events. To communicate asynchronously, interrupts are required. One reason a process needs to asynchronously communicate to another process solves

5846-400: The size of the machine needed. The different CPUs often need to send and receive messages to each other; to ensure good performance, the operating systems for these machines need to minimize this copying of packets . Newer systems are often multiqueue —separating groups of users into separate queues —to reduce the need for packet copying and support more concurrent users. Another technique

5925-473: The world. Middleware , an additional software layer between the operating system and applications, is often used to improve consistency. Although it functions similarly to an operating system, it is not a true operating system. Embedded operating systems are designed to be used in embedded computer systems , whether they are internet of things objects or not connected to a network. Embedded systems include many household appliances. The distinguishing factor

6004-417: Was a new and different situation for Linux than other operating systems, because the updates/upgrades were being released so quickly, different distributions and versions were being offered online, and especially because users were burning their own CDs. The first Linux -based 'Live CD' was Yggdrasil Linux first released in beta form 1992~1993 (ceased production in 1995), though in practice its functionality

6083-411: Was hampered due to the low throughput of contemporary CD-ROM drives. DemoLinux , released in 1998, was the first Linux distribution specially designed as a live CD. The Linuxcare bootable business card , first released in 1999, was the first Live CD to focus on system administration, and the first to be distributed in the bootable business card form factor. As of 2023 , Finnix (first released in 2000)

6162-504: Was in the computer business until 1971 when it sold its computer business to Sperry Corporation . Sperry renamed TSOS to VS/9 and continued to market it into the early 1980s. In the mid seventies, an enhanced version of TSOS called BS2000 was offered by the German company Siemens . While Sperry – now Unisys – discontinued VS/9 , the BS2000 variant, now called BS2000/OSD,

6241-406: Was the first popular computer to use a graphical user interface (GUI). The GUI proved much more user friendly than the text-only command-line interface earlier operating systems had used. Following the success of Macintosh, MS-DOS was updated with a GUI overlay called Windows . Windows later was rewritten as a stand-alone operating system, borrowing so many features from another ( VAX VMS ) that

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