1.
Bulletin board system
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A bulletin board system, or BBS, is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Many BBSes also offer on-line games, in users can compete with each other. Bulletin board systems were in many ways a precursor to the form of the World Wide Web, social networks. Low-cost, high-performance modems drove the use of services and BBSes through the early 1990s. Infoworld estimated there were 60,000 BBSes serving 17 million users in the United States alone in 1994, over the next year, many of the leading BBS software providers went bankrupt and tens of thousands of BBSes disappeared. Today, BBSing survives largely as a hobby in most parts of the world. Most BBSes are now accessible over Telnet and typically offer free email accounts, FTP services, IRC, some offer access through packet switched networks, or packet radio connections. A precursor to the bulletin board system was Community Memory, started in August 1973 in Berkeley. Useful microcomputers did not exist at that time, and modems were both expensive and slow, Community Memory therefore ran on a mainframe computer and was accessed through terminals located in several San Francisco Bay Area neighborhoods. The poor quality of the original modem connecting the terminals to the mainframe prompted a user to invent the Pennywhistle modem, Community Memory allowed the user to type messages into a computer terminal after inserting a coin, and offered a pure bulletin board experience with public messages only. It did offer the ability to tag messages with keywords, which the user could use in searches, the system acted primarily in the form of a buy and sell system with the tags taking the place of the more traditional classifications. But users found ways to express themselves outside these bounds, unfortunately, the system was expensive to operate, and when their host machine became unavailable and a new one could not be found, the system closed in January 1975. Similar functionality was available to most mainframe users, which might be considered a sort of ultra-local BBS when used in this fashion. Commercial systems, expressly intended to offer features to the public, became available in the late 1970s. Early modems were very simple devices using acoustic couplers to handle telephone operation. The user would first pick up the phone, dial a number, disconnecting at the end of a call required the user to pick up the handset and return it to the phone. With the introduction of microcomputers with expansion slots, like the S-100 bus machines and Apple II, it possible for the modem to communicate instructions. A number of modems of this sort were available by the late 1970s
2.
Floppy disk
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Floppy disks are read and written by a floppy disk drive. Floppy disks, initially as 8-inch media and later in 5¼-inch and 3½-inch sizes, were a form of data storage and exchange from the mid-1970s into the mid-2000s. These formats are usually handled by older equipment and these disks and associated drives were produced and improved upon by IBM and other companies such as Memorex, Shugart Associates, and Burroughs Corporation. The term floppy disk appeared in print as early as 1970, in 1976, Shugart Associates introduced the first 5¼-inch FDD. By 1978 there were more than 10 manufacturers producing such FDDs, there were competing floppy disk formats, with hard- and soft-sector versions and encoding schemes such as FM, MFM and GCR. The 5¼-inch format displaced the 8-inch one for most applications, the most common capacity of the 5¼-inch format in DOS-based PCs was 360 kB and in 1984 IBM introduced the 1.2 MB dual-sided floppy disk along with its PC-AT model. IBM started using the 720 kB double-density 3½-inch microfloppy disk on its Convertible laptop computer in 1986 and these disk drives could be added to older PC models. In 1988 IBM introduced a drive for 2.88 MB DSED diskettes in its top-of-the-line PS/2 models, throughout the early 1980s, limitations of the 5¼-inch format became clear. Originally designed to be practical than the 8-inch format, it was itself too large, as the quality of recording media grew. A number of solutions were developed, with drives at 2-, 2½-, 3-, 3½-, the large market share of the 5¼-inch format made it difficult for these new formats to gain significant market share. A variant on the Sony design, introduced in 1982 by a number of manufacturers, was then rapidly adopted. By the end of the 1980s, 5¼-inch disks had been superseded by 3½-inch disks, by the mid-1990s, 5¼-inch drives had virtually disappeared, as the 3½-inch disk became the predominant floppy disk. Floppy disks became ubiquitous during the 1980s and 1990s in their use with computers to distribute software, transfer data. Before hard disks became affordable to the population, floppy disks were often used to store a computers operating system. Most home computers from that period have a primary OS and BASIC stored as ROM, by the early 1990s, the increasing software size meant large packages like Windows or Adobe Photoshop required a dozen disks or more. In 1996, there were a five billion standard floppy disks in use. Then, distribution of packages was gradually replaced by CD-ROMs, DVDs. External USB-based floppy disk drives are available, many modern systems provide firmware support for booting from such drives
3.
Free software
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The right to study and modify software entails availability of the software source code to its users. This right is conditional on the person actually having a copy of the software. Richard Stallman used the existing term free software when he launched the GNU Project—a collaborative effort to create a freedom-respecting operating system—and the Free Software Foundation. The FSFs Free Software Definition states that users of software are free because they do not need to ask for permission to use the software. Free software thus differs from proprietary software, such as Microsoft Office, Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides or iWork from Apple, which users cannot study, change, freeware, which is a category of freedom-restricting proprietary software that does not require payment for use. For computer programs that are covered by law, software freedom is achieved with a software license. Software that is not covered by law, such as software in the public domain, is free if the source code is in the public domain. Proprietary software, including freeware, use restrictive software licences or EULAs, Users are thus prevented from changing the software, and this results in the user relying on the publisher to provide updates, help, and support. This situation is called vendor lock-in, Users often may not reverse engineer, modify, or redistribute proprietary software. Other legal and technical aspects, such as patents and digital rights management may restrict users in exercising their rights. Free software may be developed collaboratively by volunteer computer programmers or by corporations, as part of a commercial, from the 1950s up until the early 1970s, it was normal for computer users to have the software freedoms associated with free software, which was typically public domain software. Software was commonly shared by individuals who used computers and by manufacturers who welcomed the fact that people were making software that made their hardware useful. Organizations of users and suppliers, for example, SHARE, were formed to exchange of software. As software was written in an interpreted language such as BASIC. Software was also shared and distributed as printed source code in computer magazines and books, in United States vs. IBM, filed January 17,1969, the government charged that bundled software was anti-competitive. While some software might always be free, there would henceforth be an amount of software produced primarily for sale. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the industry began using technical measures to prevent computer users from being able to study or adapt the software as they saw fit. In 1980, copyright law was extended to computer programs, Software development for the GNU operating system began in January 1984, and the Free Software Foundation was founded in October 1985
4.
Data compression
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In signal processing, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction involves encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Compression can be lossy or lossless. Lossless compression reduces bits by identifying and eliminating statistical redundancy, no information is lost in lossless compression. Lossy compression reduces bits by removing unnecessary or less important information, the process of reducing the size of a data file is referred to as data compression. In the context of data transmission, it is called coding in opposition to channel coding. Compression is useful because it reduces resources required to store and transmit data, computational resources are consumed in the compression process and, usually, in the reversal of the process. Data compression is subject to a space–time complexity trade-off, Lossless data compression algorithms usually exploit statistical redundancy to represent data without losing any information, so that the process is reversible. Lossless compression is possible because most real-world data exhibits statistical redundancy, for example, an image may have areas of color that do not change over several pixels, instead of coding red pixel, red pixel. The data may be encoded as 279 red pixels and this is a basic example of run-length encoding, there are many schemes to reduce file size by eliminating redundancy. The Lempel–Ziv compression methods are among the most popular algorithms for lossless storage, DEFLATE is a variation on LZ optimized for decompression speed and compression ratio, but compression can be slow. DEFLATE is used in PKZIP, Gzip, and PNG, LZW is used in GIF images. LZ methods use a table-based compression model where table entries are substituted for repeated strings of data, for most LZ methods, this table is generated dynamically from earlier data in the input. The table itself is often Huffman encoded, current LZ-based coding schemes that perform well are Brotli and LZX. LZX is used in Microsofts CAB format, the best modern lossless compressors use probabilistic models, such as prediction by partial matching. The Burrows–Wheeler transform can also be viewed as a form of statistical modelling. The basic task of grammar-based codes is constructing a context-free grammar deriving a single string, sequitur and Re-Pair are practical grammar compression algorithms for which software is publicly available. In a further refinement of the use of probabilistic modelling. Arithmetic coding is a more modern coding technique that uses the mathematical calculations of a machine to produce a string of encoded bits from a series of input data symbols
5.
Zipeg
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Zipeg is an open source free software that extracts files from compressed archives like ZIP, RAR, 7z and others, some of which are rarely used types. Zipeg works under Mac OS X and Windows and it is best known for its file preview ability. It is incapable of compressing files, although it is able to extract compressed ones, Zipeg is built on top of the 7-Zip backend. Its UI is implemented in Java and is open source, Zipeg automatically detects filenames in national alphabets and correctly translates them to Unicode. Zipeg reads Exif thumbnails from JPEG digital photographs and uses them for tool tip style preview, zip Data compression Zipeg review from c|net Zipeg review by Macworld Zipeg main site http, //www. zipeg. com/ Zipeg source code http, //zipeg. googlecode. com/
6.
Microsoft Windows
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Microsoft Windows is a metafamily of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft. It consists of families of operating systems, each of which cater to a certain sector of the computing industry with the OS typically associated with IBM PC compatible architecture. Active Windows families include Windows NT, Windows Embedded and Windows Phone, defunct Windows families include Windows 9x, Windows 10 Mobile is an active product, unrelated to the defunct family Windows Mobile. Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20,1985, Microsoft Windows came to dominate the worlds personal computer market with over 90% market share, overtaking Mac OS, which had been introduced in 1984. Apple came to see Windows as an encroachment on their innovation in GUI development as implemented on products such as the Lisa. On PCs, Windows is still the most popular operating system, however, in 2014, Microsoft admitted losing the majority of the overall operating system market to Android, because of the massive growth in sales of Android smartphones. In 2014, the number of Windows devices sold was less than 25% that of Android devices sold and this comparison however may not be fully relevant, as the two operating systems traditionally target different platforms. As of September 2016, the most recent version of Windows for PCs, tablets, smartphones, the most recent versions for server computers is Windows Server 2016. A specialized version of Windows runs on the Xbox One game console, Microsoft, the developer of Windows, has registered several trademarks each of which denote a family of Windows operating systems that target a specific sector of the computing industry. It now consists of three operating system subfamilies that are released almost at the time and share the same kernel. Windows, The operating system for personal computers, tablets. The latest version is Windows 10, the main competitor of this family is macOS by Apple Inc. for personal computers and Android for mobile devices. Windows Server, The operating system for server computers, the latest version is Windows Server 2016. Unlike its clients sibling, it has adopted a strong naming scheme, the main competitor of this family is Linux. Windows PE, A lightweight version of its Windows sibling meant to operate as an operating system, used for installing Windows on bare-metal computers. The latest version is Windows PE10.0.10586.0, Windows Embedded, Initially, Microsoft developed Windows CE as a general-purpose operating system for every device that was too resource-limited to be called a full-fledged computer. The following Windows families are no longer being developed, Windows 9x, Microsoft now caters to the consumers market with Windows NT. Windows Mobile, The predecessor to Windows Phone, it was a mobile operating system
7.
Haiku Applications
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Haiku is a free and open-source operating system compatible with the now discontinued BeOS. Haiku comes with a set of small yet essential applications. Core applications are a part of Haiku, as they serve many different purposes. Haiku also has some 3rd party applications to supplement the core applications, the applications are usually executed by double clicking on the icon. ActivityMonitor is a monitor, making it possible for users to analyse the performance. They can view such as the memory being used, cached memory. ActivityMonitor presents the information in form, which makes it easy for the users to understand their computer performance. Haiku CharacterMap is a Character Map utility that shows the UTF-8 Code of every character a font supports, the font size can be changed and the user can drag any character into the StyledEdit application or the character can be copied and pasted where needed. CodyCam is a photo and video program that makes it possible for the user to take pictures at a specified interval from a connected webcam or any other video-in device. Users can specify the name, the image and video format, the capture interval. DeskCalc is a simple Calculator that can perform different tasks related to mathematics and it has a simple interface and on the front screen it has some functions or buttons which can perform addition, subtraction, multiplication and division but it is not restricted to these only. DeskCalc can also perform tasks related to trigonometry, the type of the calculator can also be changed into scientific, radical or any other type to use it for different purposes. DiskProbe is a Hex editor to view and alter data of a file or on a device on a byte-level, at the start, a file has to be chosen by the user to edit it further in the application. The main view shows a block of data and its size can be changed, diskUsage is a Disk space analyser application that provides graphical information to the user showing the disk space being consumed. Scan button has to be clicked once the user executes the application in order to start the scanning process, the application provides a pie chart showing the volume of space being used. Users can understand the graph and can utilise that data in different ways. Every segment of the circle represents a folder and when the cursor is taken one of them. The user can choose to re-scan the folder if they want to and they can also open it with another application or can fetch further information about the memory consumed
8.
DOS
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None of these systems were officially named DOS, and indeed DOS is a general term for disk operating system. MS-DOS dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, and Microsoft Windows, still ran on top of it until about 2001, dozens of other operating systems also use the acronym DOS, including DOS/360 from 1966. Others are Apple DOS, Apple ProDOS, Atari DOS, Commodore DOS, TRSDOS, see List of DOS operating systems § Other operating systems. IBM PC DOS and its predecessor, 86-DOS, resembled Digital Researchs CP/M—the dominant disk operating system for 8-bit Intel 8080, DOS instead ran on Intel 8086 16-bit processors. Starting with MS-DOS1.28 and PC DOS2.0 the operating system incorporated various features inspired by Xenix, when IBM introduced the IBM PC, built with the Intel 8088 microprocessor, they needed an operating system. Seeking an 8088-compatible build of CP/M, IBM initially approached Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, IBM was sent to Digital Research, and a meeting was set up. However, the negotiations for the use of CP/M broke down, Digital Research wished to sell CP/M on a royalty basis, while IBM sought a single license. Digital Research founder Gary Kildall refused, and IBM withdrew, Gates in turn approached Seattle Computer Products. There, programmer Tim Paterson had developed a variant of CP/M-80, the system was initially named QDOS, before being made commercially available as 86-DOS. Microsoft purchased 86-DOS, allegedly for $50,000 and this became Microsoft Disk Operating System, MS-DOS, introduced in 1981. Within a year Microsoft licensed MS-DOS to over 70 other companies, Microsoft later required the use of the MS-DOS name, with the exception of the IBM variant. IBM continued to develop their version, PC DOS, for the IBM PC, Digital Research became aware that an operating system similar to CP/M was being sold by IBM, and threatened legal action. IBM responded by offering an agreement, they would give PC consumers a choice of PC DOS or CP/M-86, side-by-side, CP/M cost almost $200 more than PC DOS, and sales were low. CP/M faded, with MS-DOS and PC DOS becoming the operating system for PCs. Microsoft originally sold MS-DOS only to original equipment manufacturers, one major reason for this was that not all early PCs were 100% IBM PC compatible. DOS was structured such that there was a separation between the specific device driver code and the DOS kernel. Microsoft provided an OEM Adaptation Kit which allowed OEMs to customize the device driver code to their particular system, by the early 1990s, most PCs adhered to IBM PC standards so Microsoft began selling MS-DOS in retail with MS-DOS5.0. In the mid-1980s Microsoft developed a version of DOS
9.
WinZip
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WinZip is a shareware file archiver and compressor for Windows, macOS, iOS and Android developed by WinZip Computing. It can create archives in Zip file format, and unpack some other file formats. Unpack BZ2, LHA, LZH, RAR, ZIP, 7Z, WinZip 1.0 was released in April 1991 as a graphical user interface front-end for PKZIP. Earlier in January 1991 Nico Mak Computing released a GUI front-end for OS/2 Presentation Manager called PMZIP and it used the OS/2 versions of the PKWARE, Inc. Originally released on CompuServe, availability of WinZip expanded across major online services, including GEnie, Prodigy, in 1993, WinZip announced the launch of its official support for customers on the Windows Utility Forum, serving over 100,000 members, providing updates and related information. By 1994, WinZip had become the official and required compression tool used by operators on CompuServe for forum file libraries. Starting from version 5.0 in 1993, the creators of WinZip incorporated compression code from the Info-ZIP project, from version 6.0 until version 9. This upgrade scheme was discontinued as of version 10.0, WinZip is available in standard and professional versions. However, the shell in Windows ME and later versions of Microsoft Windows has the ability to open and create. zip files, which reduces the need for extra compression software. On May 2,2006, Corel Corporation, best known for its WordPerfect and CorelDRAW product lines, WinZip 1.0 for Mac OS X was released in November 2010. This version is compatible with Mac OS X10.6 “Snow Leopard”, WinZip Mac Edition 2 includes support for OS X10.8 Mountain Lion. 128- and 256-bit key AES encryption in addition to the less secure PKZIP2.0 encryption method used in earlier versions, the AES implementation, using Brian Gladmans code, was FIPS-197 certified, on March 27,2003. However, Central Directory Encryption feature is not supported, support of additional compression methods, bzip2, PPMd, WavPack, LZMA, JPEG. Unicode support to ensure international characters are displayed for filenames in a Zip file, the ZIP file archive format was originally invented for MS-DOS in 1989 by Phil Katz. Seeing the need for an application with a Graphical User Interface, Nico Mak seized the opportunity. WinZip 1.0 was initial version for Windows, WinZip 2.0 added support for ARC files, support for self-extracting ZIP files, optional interface to Virus Scan software, dialog box to specify paths and filenames of external programs. WinZip 3.0 added full support for LZH files, including self-extracting LZH files, configurable support for most virus scanners, simplified options to add, WinZip 3.2 added Built-in ZIP Extraction so that PKUNZIP is not needed for most ZIP extract operations. WinZip always uses PKZIP. EXE to modify ZIP files, WinZip 4.0 added support for PKZIP2.0, including built-in ZIP extraction, support for the ARJ file format, new toolbar with descriptive pictorial buttons, added a 3-D look to all dialog boxes
10.
PowerArchiver
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PowerArchiver is a proprietary file archiver for Microsoft Windows, developed by ConeXware Inc. It supports full read-write access to several different archive formats, including ZIP, 7z, additionally, read-only support includes RAR, ACE and various disk image formats. The evaluation version of the program remains functional for 40 days, personal licenses are currently permitted free lifetime updates to all future versions of the software, while the business license is valid through two major versions. PowerArchivers first public release was made in March 1999 and it was advertised as a free archiving solution and was written in Borland Delphi. It turned into shareware in June 2001 with version 7, prior to being PowerArchiver, the software was known as EasyZip. A command line version and a Microsoft Outlook plugin is also provided, powerArchivers user interface has been translated into 15 languages. The latest release of PowerArchiver fully supports Windows 7 and provides the user an option to use the Ribbon GUI, as featured in Microsoft Office 2007, users can revert to the old-style toolbar if they wish. In 2011 Softpedia gave it five stars, praising its wide support for various compressed file types, FTP, later in 2013 Download. com gave it five stars. Data compression Comparison of file archivers PowerArchiver home page History pre-9.0, post-9.0
11.
WinAce
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WinAce is an archiving program for Windows with its own ACE compressed archive format and built-in support for other common archive formats types such as ZIP, RAR and CAB. They also offer a freeware command-line decompression program called Unace for Mac OS X, WinAce peaked in popularity around 2000, but since fallen in popularity to WinRAR and Windows built-in Zip functionality. Beginning with version 2.65, WinAce is bundled with the WhenU adware program and this bundle has been removed from the current version and has been replaced with an opt-in sponsorship deal via TrialPay. There is a version for DOS called Commandline ACE. In addition to the ACE format, it has support for other common archive format types such as ARJ, RAR, ZIP. Program distribution contains both Commandline ACE and UnACE decompressor, both programs are in versions for DOS, OS/2 and Windows, and have support for Long File Names. Despite its name, Commandline ACE contains full-fledged Norton Commander-like interface, UnACE can be run only in commandline mode. Commandline ACE can be used for manipulation, similar to that existing in Norton Commander. List of file archivers Comparison of file archivers Official WinAce site
