Operating Systems

The operating system is a software system that served to make the control and management of hardware and basic system operations, including the software applications such as word processing programs and web browsers.

In general, the Operating System software is the first layer is placed on the computer memory when the computer starts.

Operating systems generally consist of several parts:

1. Boot mechanism, namely to put the kernel in memory
2. Kernel, the core of an Operating System
3. Command Interpreter or shell, which reads input from the user
4. Libraries, which provides the basic set of functions and standards that can be called by other applications
5th. Drivers to interact with external hardware, as well as to control them.

Operating System currently

Operating system-the main operating system used by the general system of computers (including PCs, personal computer) are divided into three major groups:

1. Family Microsoft Windows - which is comprised of the Windows Desktop Environment (version 1.x to version 3.x), Windows 9x (Windows 95, 98, and Windows ME), and Windows NT (Windows NT 3.x, Windows NT 4.0 , Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows 7 (Seven), was released in 2009, and Windows Orient which will be released in 2014)).
2. Unix family of operating systems that use the POSIX interfaces, such as SCO UNIX, family BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution), GNU / Linux, MacOS / X (BSD-based kernel is modified, and known by the name of Darwin) and GNU / Hurd.
3. Mac OS, is the operating system for Apple computers commonly referred to output your Mac or Macintosh. Newest operating system is Mac OS X version 10.4 (Tiger). Early in 2007 planned launch of version 10.5 (Leopard).

Source : www.wikipedia.com