Every
new computer that’s brought home from the store has an operating system
installed onto it. But what most new computer users don’t realize, is that
without an operating system, that computer would be a simple shell of
possibilities. A powered computer lacking an operating system wouldn’t display
anything more than a bunch of confusing text messages that describe the
computer’s boot process. At the very end of this process, the computer looks
for an operating system and if not found, it will prompt the user to tell it
where it is.
Earlier
computers didn’t have an operating system and if you have experience with the
computers of the early eighties, you’ll remember that most to them didn’t even
have a hard drive! These old computers booted an MS-DOS type operating system
from drivers stored onto a floppy disk, and in order to use a program, users
would remove the boot floppy and then insert a new floppy that contained the
program. The floppy not only stored the program (word processor, spreadsheet,
etc.), it also stored the drivers that the program needed to communicate with
the computer’s hardware. As you can imagine, the cumbersome process of
switching from floppy to floppy prompted the birth of the operating system.
An
operating system is a software program that controls how the computer’s
hardware (and installed software) works. It manages the activity of every
component and then displays that activity as a user-friendly interface (GUI).
It keeps track of where things exist on a computer’s hard drive as well. But
perhaps most importantly for the end-user, the operating system is responsible
for translating commands issued with a keyboard and mouse into binary code
(010110101 stuff) that can communicate with a set of speakers, a printer, a
scanner, and more.
With
an operating system installed onto a computer’s hard drive, users no longer
need to boot a computer with a floppy disk, nor do they need to run programs
from a floppy disk. All the drivers of a program are stored onto the computer
and used whenever a program is started.
Apple’s
Macintosh computer was among the first of a couple systems to establish a
user-to-hardware relationship through a user-friendly interface. Today, we have
quite a few operating systems. Some of the more popular ones are Windows Vista,
Mac OS X, ZETA, IBM, Unix, and Linux. But even still, operating systems have
extended onto to non-computer devices such as game consoles, portable music
players, and PDAs. Regardless of the device, the operating system installed
onto it serves the same purpose across the board: to enable user-to-hardware
communication.
When
you think about upgrading your computer to a new operating system, be careful
to make sure that you have the necessary hardware components. We tried to
upgrade one of our Windows 98 machines to Windows XP, but we were cautioned
that the former may not be hardware compatible with XP technology. Apparently,
the Windows XP operating system requires components that weren’t developed at
the time Windows 98 was distributed and if we were to install Windows XP on
this machine anyway, the new operating system would look for hardware that the
computer didn’t have. And that would be an instant recipe for failure.
Also
be careful about installing operating systems that are incompatible with
existing hardware. The hardware of Macintosh computers is extremely different
from the hardware of Windows computers and under no circumstances will a
Windows operating system work on a Macintosh machine!
This is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Accordingly, it is difficult to figure out when to end it. But then, this is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Period.
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