1.
Window
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A window is an opening in a wall, door, roof or vehicle that allows the passage of light and, if not closed or sealed, air and sound by using sheet glass. Modern windows are glazed or covered in some other transparent or translucent material. Windows are held in place by frames, many glazed windows may be opened, to allow ventilation, or closed, to exclude inclement weather. Windows often have a latch or similar mechanism to lock the window shut, the Romans were the first known to use glass for windows, a technology likely first produced in Roman Egypt, in Alexandria ca.100 AD. Paper windows were economical and widely used in ancient China, Korea, in England, glass became common in the windows of ordinary homes only in the early 17th century whereas windows made up of panes of flattened animal horn were used as early as the 14th century. In the 19th century American west, greased paper windows came to be used by itinerant groups, modern-style floor-to-ceiling windows became possible only after the industrial plate glass making processes were perfected. The English language-word window originates from the Old Norse vindauga, from vindr – wind and auga – eye, the Danish word is pronounced fairly similarly to window. Window is first recorded in the early 13th century, and originally referred to a hole in a roof. Window replaced the Old English eagþyrl, which literally means eye-hole, many Germanic languages however adopted the Latin word fenestra to describe a window with glass, such as standard Swedish fönster, or German Fenster. The use of window in English is probably because of the Scandinavian influence on the English language by means of loanwords during the Viking Age, in English the word fenester was used as a parallel until the mid-18th century. Fenestration is still used to describe the arrangement of windows within a façade, as well as defenestration, in the 13th century, the earliest windows were unglazed openings cut in a roof to admit light during the day. Later, windows were covered with animal hide, cloth, or wood, shutters that could be opened and closed came next. Over time, windows were built that both protected the inhabitants from the elements and transmitted light, using small pieces of translucent material set in frameworks of wood. In the Far East, paper was used to fill windows, the Romans were the first known to use glass for windows, a technology likely first produced in Roman Egypt. It would be over a millennium before a window glass became transparent enough to see through clearly, over the centuries techniques were developed to shear through one side of a blown glass cylinder and produce thinner rectangular window panes from the same amount of glass material. This gave rise to tall narrow windows, usually separated by a vertical support called a mullion, mullioned glass windows were the windows of choice among European well-to-do, whereas paper windows were economical and widely used in ancient China, Korea and Japan. In England, glass became common in the windows of homes only in the early 17th century whereas windows made up of panes of flattened animal horn were used as early as the 14th century. Modern-style floor-to-ceiling windows became possible only after the plate glass making processes were perfected
2.
Windows 10
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Windows 10 is a personal computer operating system developed and released by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It was officially unveiled in September 2014 following a brief demo at Build 2014, privacy concerns were also voiced by critics and advocates, as the operating systems default settings and certain features require the transmission of user data to Microsoft or its partners. Up to August 2016, Windows 10 usage was increasing, with it then plateauing, the operating system is running on more than 400 million active devices and has an estimated usage share of 27. 72% on traditional PCs and 12. 53% across all platforms. We won’t have an ecosystem for PCs, and one for phones, in December 2013, technology writer Mary Jo Foley reported that Microsoft was working on an update to Windows 8 codenamed Threshold, after a planet in Microsofts Halo video game franchise. Similarly to Blue, Foley called Threshold a wave of operating systems across multiple Microsoft platforms and services, Foley reported that among the goals for Threshold was to create a unified application platform and development toolkit for Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox One. The new Start menu takes after Windows 7s design by using only a portion of the screen, the second column displays Windows 8-style app tiles. Myerson said that changes would occur in a future update. Windows Phone 8.1 would share nearly 90% of the common Windows Runtime APIs with Windows 8.1 on PCs, despite these concessions, Myerson noted that the touch-oriented interface would evolve as well on 10. He also joked that they could not call it Windows One because Windows 1.0 already existed.1, further details surrounding Windows 10s consumer-oriented features were presented during another media event held on January 21,2015, entitled Windows 10, The Next Chapter. Additional developer-oriented details surrounding the Universal Windows Platform concept were revealed and discussed during Microsofts developers conference Build, among them were the unveiling of Islandwood, which provides a middleware toolchain for compiling Objective-C based software to run as universal apps on Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile. On June 1,2015, Microsoft announced that Windows 10 would be released on July 29,2015. The commercials focused on the tagline A more human way to do, the campaign culminated with launch events in thirteen cities on July 29, which celebrated the unprecedented role our biggest fans played in the development of Windows 10. Windows 10 harmonizes the user experience and functionality between different classes of device, and addresses shortcomings in the interface that were introduced in Windows 8. Windows 10 Mobile, the successor to Windows Phone 8.1, shares some user interface elements, the Windows Runtime app ecosystem was revised into the Universal Windows Platform. These universal apps are made to run across platforms and device classes, including smartphones, tablets, Xbox One consoles. Developers can allow cross-buys, where purchased licenses for an app apply to all of the users compatible devices, on Windows 10, Windows Store serves as a unified storefront for apps, Groove Music, and Movies & TV. Windows 10 also allows web apps and desktop software to be packaged for distribution on the Windows Store, desktop software distributed through Windows Store is packaged using the App-V system to allow sandboxing. A new iteration of the Start menu is used on the Windows 10 desktop, with a list of places and other options on the left side, the menu can be resized, and expanded into a full-screen display, which is the default option in Tablet mode
3.
Start menu
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The Start menu is a user interface element used in Microsoft Windows since Windows 95 and in some other operating systems. It provides a launching point for computer programs and performing other tasks. It has different names in different operating systems and window managers, such as Kickoff Application Launcher in KDE, Dash in GNOME and Unity, later enhancements via Windows Desktop Update included access to special folders like My Documents and Favorites. Windows XPs Start menu was expanded to encompass various My Documents folders, until Windows Vista, the Start menu was constantly expanded across the screen as the user navigated through its cascading sub-menus. In Microsoft Windows, the Start menu in some form appears in Windows 9x, Windows NT4.0 and all subsequent versions in the Windows NT family, as well as Windows CE, Windows Mobile and Windows Phone. The Start menu was first introduced in Windows 95 and Windows NT4.0 to overcome the shortcomings of Program Manager in previous operating systems. Program Manager consisted of a multiple document interface which allowed users to open separate program groups. It lacked the ability to nest groups within other groups, Windows 95 and Windows NT4.0 replaced Program Manager with desktop and Start menu. Items could also be added to the Start menu by dragging and dropping them. The menu also offered the ability to shut down and log off from their computer, although Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 introduced a new version of Start menu, they offered the ability to switch back to this version of Start menu. This version of the Start menu is available in Windows Vista. However, it is absent in Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, the next major change in the Start menu since its inception came in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. This column also includes shortcuts for Computer and Network, which have traditionally placed on Windows Desktop. The contents of this column can be customized, commonly used programs are automatically displayed in the left-hand menu. Users may opt to pin programs to this side of the Start menu so that they are always accessible, a sub-menu item at the bottom of this column grants access to all items of Start menu. When this menu item is selected, a scrolling list of start menu programs replaces the user/recent list, Windows Vista and its successors added minor changes to the menu. In Windows Vista, however, cascading menus were replaced by a window in the left pane of the Start menu. Whenever All Programs item is clicked, the contents of the left pane slide off the edge of the Start menu
4.
Software developer
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A software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process, including the research, design, programming, and testing of computer software. Other job titles which are used with similar meanings are programmer, software analyst. According to developer Eric Sink, the differences between system design, software development, and programming are more apparent, even more so that developers become systems architects, those who design the multi-leveled architecture or component interactions of a large software system. In a large company, there may be employees whose sole responsibility consists of one of the phases above. In smaller development environments, a few people or even an individual might handle the complete process. The word software was coined as a prank as early as 1953, before this time, computers were programmed either by customers, or the few commercial computer vendors of the time, such as UNIVAC and IBM. The first company founded to provide products and services was Computer Usage Company in 1955. The software industry expanded in the early 1960s, almost immediately after computers were first sold in mass-produced quantities, universities, government, and business customers created a demand for software. Many of these programs were written in-house by full-time staff programmers, some were distributed freely between users of a particular machine for no charge. Others were done on a basis, and other firms such as Computer Sciences Corporation started to grow. The computer/hardware makers started bundling operating systems, systems software and programming environments with their machines, new software was built for microcomputers, so other manufacturers including IBM, followed DECs example quickly, resulting in the IBM AS/400 amongst others. The industry expanded greatly with the rise of the computer in the mid-1970s. In the following years, it created a growing market for games, applications. DOS, Microsofts first operating system product, was the dominant operating system at the time, by 2014 the role of cloud developer had been defined, in this context, one definition of a developer in general was published, Developers make software for the world to use. The job of a developer is to crank out code -- fresh code for new products, code fixes for maintenance, code for business logic, bus factor Software Developer description from the US Department of Labor
5.
Microsoft
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Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup, as of 2016, it was the worlds largest software maker by revenue, and one of the worlds most valuable companies. Microsoft was founded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates on April 4,1975, to develop and it rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows. The companys 1986 initial public offering, and subsequent rise in its share price, since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions. In May 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion, in June 2012, Microsoft entered the personal computer production market for the first time, with the launch of the Microsoft Surface, a line of tablet computers. The word Microsoft is a portmanteau of microcomputer and software, Paul Allen and Bill Gates, childhood friends with a passion for computer programming, sought to make a successful business utilizing their shared skills. In 1972 they founded their first company, named Traf-O-Data, which offered a computer that tracked and analyzed automobile traffic data. Allen went on to pursue a degree in science at Washington State University. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systemss Altair 8800 microcomputer, Allen suggested that they could program a BASIC interpreter for the device, after a call from Gates claiming to have a working interpreter, MITS requested a demonstration. Since they didnt actually have one, Allen worked on a simulator for the Altair while Gates developed the interpreter and they officially established Microsoft on April 4,1975, with Gates as the CEO. Allen came up with the name of Micro-Soft, as recounted in a 1995 Fortune magazine article. In August 1977 the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office, the company moved to a new home in Bellevue, Washington in January 1979. Microsoft entered the OS business in 1980 with its own version of Unix, however, it was MS-DOS that solidified the companys dominance. For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, branding it as MS-DOS, following the release of the IBM PC in August 1981, Microsoft retained ownership of MS-DOS. Since IBM copyrighted the IBM PC BIOS, other companies had to engineer it in order for non-IBM hardware to run as IBM PC compatibles. Due to various factors, such as MS-DOSs available software selection, the company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as with a publishing division named Microsoft Press. Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in 1983 after developing Hodgkins disease, while jointly developing a new OS with IBM in 1984, OS/2, Microsoft released Microsoft Windows, a graphical extension for MS-DOS, on November 20,1985. Once Microsoft informed IBM of NT, the OS/2 partnership deteriorated, in 1990, Microsoft introduced its office suite, Microsoft Office
6.
Software release life cycle
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Usage of the alpha/beta test terminology originated at IBM. As long ago as the 1950s, IBM used similar terminology for their hardware development, a test was the verification of a new product before public announcement. B test was the verification before releasing the product to be manufactured, C test was the final test before general availability of the product. Martin Belsky, a manager on some of IBMs earlier software projects claimed to have invented the terminology, IBM dropped the alpha/beta terminology during the 1960s, but by then it had received fairly wide notice. The usage of beta test to refer to testing done by customers was not done in IBM, rather, IBM used the term field test. Pre-alpha refers to all activities performed during the project before formal testing. These activities can include requirements analysis, software design, software development, in typical open source development, there are several types of pre-alpha versions. Milestone versions include specific sets of functions and are released as soon as the functionality is complete, the alpha phase of the release life cycle is the first phase to begin software testing. In this phase, developers generally test the software using white-box techniques, additional validation is then performed using black-box or gray-box techniques, by another testing team. Moving to black-box testing inside the organization is known as alpha release, alpha software can be unstable and could cause crashes or data loss. Alpha software may not contain all of the features that are planned for the final version, in general, external availability of alpha software is uncommon in proprietary software, while open source software often has publicly available alpha versions. The alpha phase usually ends with a freeze, indicating that no more features will be added to the software. At this time, the software is said to be feature complete, Beta, named after the second letter of the Greek alphabet, is the software development phase following alpha. Software in the stage is also known as betaware. Beta phase generally begins when the software is complete but likely to contain a number of known or unknown bugs. Software in the phase will generally have many more bugs in it than completed software, as well as speed/performance issues. The focus of beta testing is reducing impacts to users, often incorporating usability testing, the process of delivering a beta version to the users is called beta release and this is typically the first time that the software is available outside of the organization that developed it. Beta version software is useful for demonstrations and previews within an organization
7.
Windows Update
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Windows Update, a service offered by Microsoft, provides updates for Windows components. The service provides different kinds of updates, security updates or critical updates protect against vulnerabilities to malware and security exploits. Other updates correct errors unrelated to security, or enhance functionality, Windows Vista and later provide a Control Panel to configure update settings and check for updates. The Windows Update Control Panel also has the function of downloading Windows Ultimate Extras, for previous versions of Microsoft Windows, users can download updates from the Windows Update website, using Internet Explorer. Windows Update was introduced as an Internet web site with the launch of Windows 95, a link to Windows Update on the Start Menu gave access to additional downloads for the operating system. At the time of Windows 98s release, Windows Update offered additional desktop themes, games, device driver updates, fixes to Windows 98 to resolve the Year 2000 problem were distributed using Windows Update in December 1998. Microsoft attributed the success of Windows 98 in part to Windows Update. The first version of the Windows Update web site did not require any personally-identifiable information to be sent to Microsoft, as the number of updates offered by Windows Update grew, this resulted in performance concerns. Arie Slob, writing for the Windows-help. net newsletter in March 2003, noted that the size of the update list had exceeded 400KB, which caused delays of more than a minute for dial-up users. It also narrowed down the list of updates for the operating system and related components by sending details of what operating system version, service pack. German technology web site tecchannel. de published an analysis of the Windows Update communication protocol in February 2003, the check was performed by querying the server for a file, cucif. cab, which contains a list of all the critical updates released for the users operating system. An analysis done by security researcher H. D. Moore in early 1999 was critical of this approach, describing it as horribly inefficient and susceptible to attacks. In a posting to BugTraq, he explained that, every single Windows 98 computer that wishes to get an update has to rely on a single host for the security. If that one server got compromised one day, or an attacker cracks the MS DNS server again, the scope of this attack is big enough to attract crackers who actually know what they are doing. The Critical Update Notification tool continued to be promoted by Microsoft through 1999, initial releases of Windows 2000 shipped with the tool, but Windows 95 and Windows NT4.0 were not supported. It was superseded by Automatic Updates in Windows Me and Windows 2000 SP3, with the release of Windows ME in 2000, Microsoft introduced Automatic Updates as a replacement for the Critical Update Notification tool. Unlike its predecessor, Automatic Updates includes the ability to download, instead of the five-minute schedule used by its predecessor, the Automatic Updates client checks the Windows Update servers once a day. The user is given the option to download available updates then prompt the user to install them, after Windows Me is installed, the user is prompted via a notification balloon to configure the Automatic Updates client
8.
Windows Anytime Upgrade
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Windows Anytime Upgrade is a discontinued component of Windows Vista and Windows 7 that enabled users to upgrade their editions of Windows. Pricing for upgrades purchased through Anytime Upgrade was also reduced when compared with retail packaging. In Windows 8 and Windows 8, however, support for this feature in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 was dropped on October 31,2015. Windows Anytime Upgrade was in development prior to the development reset of Windows Vista, a preliminary version of the feature can be seen in build 4093. On February 26,2006, Microsoft announced the editions of Windows Vista to be released to retail, after this announcement, various technology-related outlets reported that Anytime Upgrade would enable users to upgrade to successive editions. All editions of Windows Vista, excluding Enterprise, are stored on the same retail, when first announced, Anytime Upgrade enabled users to purchase a digital license from an online merchant to upgrade their edition of Windows Vista. If none of these options were available, Anytime Upgrade provided an option for a user to purchase a DVD online and have it delivered by mail, Microsoft also released retail packaging for Anytime Upgrade. The retail products were available during the consumer launch of Windows Vista on January 30,2007. The initial version of products included only an upgrade license. In an effort to streamline the process, Microsoft announced that digital license distribution would cease on February 20,2008. DVDs for Anytime Upgrade were only produced for Windows Vista, Anytime Upgrade in Windows Vista performs a full reinstallation of the new product edition while retaining the users data, programs, and settings. This process can take a considerable amount of time, up to a few hours, Anytime Upgrade in Windows 7 no longer performs a full reinstallation of Windows. Microsoft stated that an upgrade should take approximately 10 minutes, Anytime Upgrade also does not require physical media or additional software. Instead, Windows 7 requires a user to purchase a license online, Microsoft would also release Anytime Upgrade packaging for Windows 7 at retail. The packaging, however, would include a license for the edition to be upgraded. English version retail packaging for Anytime Upgrade was made available at the launch of Windows Vista for North America. Anytime Upgrade was available for Windows 7 in select regions, Windows Easy Transfer Windows Vista editions Windows Ultimate Extras Windows 7 editions
9.
Microsoft Store (digital)
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Windows Store is an app store for Microsoft Windows, starting with Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. It is the means of distributing Universal Windows Platform apps. Both free and paid apps can be distributed through Windows Store, Windows Store was first made available with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview on February 29,2012. Later in 2015, Windows Phone Store, Xbox Video and Xbox Music stores were merged into Windows Store, as with other similar platforms, such as the Mac App Store and Google Play, Windows Store is curated and apps must be certified for compatibility and content. With all app sales, Microsoft takes 30% of the sale price, prior to January 1,2015, the cut was reduced to 20% after the developers profits reached $25,000. Games, Entertainment, Books and Reference, and Education are the largest categories by number of apps, Microsoft previously maintained a similar digital distribution system for software known as Windows Marketplace, which allowed customers to purchase software online and download it to their computer. Product keys and licenses were tracked by the platform, allowing users to retrieve their purchases when switching computers, Windows Marketplace was discontinued in November 2008. Microsoft first announced a distribution service for Windows at its presentation during the Build developer conference on September 13,2011. For consumers, Windows Store is intended to be the way to obtain Metro-style apps. While announced alongside the Developer Preview release of Windows 8, Windows Store itself did not become available until the Consumer Preview, an updated version of Windows Store was introduced in Windows 8.1. Its home page was remodeled to display apps in focused categories with expanded details, Windows Store serves as a unified storefront for Windows 10 on all platforms, offering apps, Groove Music soundtracks, Microsoft Movies & TV videos, themes, and ebooks purchases. Web apps and desktop software can be packaged for distribution on Windows Store, desktop software distributed through Windows Store will be packaged using the App-V system to allow sandboxing. Windows Store is available in Windows Server 2012 but is not installed by default, Windows Store is the primary means of distributing Windows Store apps to users. Although sideloading apps from outside the store is supported, out-of-box sideloading support on Windows 8 is only available for Windows 8 Enterprise computers that have joined a Windows domain. Sideloading on Windows RT and Windows 8 Pro devices, and Windows 8 Enterprise computers without a domain affiliation, Windows 10 removes this requirement, allowing users to enable the installation of universal apps from outside of Windows Store using a switch in the developer menu of Settings app. Microsoft takes a 30% cut of app sales until it reaches US$25,000 in revenue, third-party transactions are also allowed, of which Microsoft does not take a cut. Effective January 1,2015, the reduction in cut at $25,000 will be removed, individual developers are able to register for $19 USD and companies for $99 USD. Developers from 120 countries can submit apps to Windows Store, the app now can support any of 109 languages, as long as it supports one of 12 app certification languages
10.
Windows Server Update Services
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WSUS downloads these updates from the Microsoft Update website and then distributes them to computers on a network. WSUS runs on Windows Server and is free to licensed Microsoft customers, the first version of WSUS was known as Software Update Services. At first, it only delivered hotfixes and patches for Microsoft operating systems, SUS ran on a Windows Server operating system and downloaded updates for the specified versions of Windows from the remote Windows Update site which was operated by Microsoft. Clients could then download updates from this server, rather than connecting directly to Windows Update. Support for SUS by Microsoft was originally planned to end on December 6,2006, but based on user feedback, WSUS builds on SUS by expanding the range of software it can update. The WSUS infrastructure allows automatic downloads of updates, hotfixes, service packs, device drivers, Windows Server Update Services 2.0 and above comprise a repository of update packages from Microsoft. It allows administrators to approve or decline updates before release, to force updates to install by a given date, system administrators can also configure WSUS to approve certain classes of updates automatically. One can also approve updates for detection only, allowing an administrator to see what machines will require a given update without also installing that update. Administrators can use WSUS with Group Policy for client-side configuration of the Automatic Updates client, WSUS does not require the use of Active Directory, client configuration can also be applied by local group policy or by modifying the Windows registry. WSUS uses. NET Framework, Microsoft Management Console and Internet Information Services, WSUS3.0 uses either SQL Server Express or Windows Internal Database as its database engine, whereas WSUS2.0 uses WMSDE. System Center Configuration Manager interoperates with WSUS, and is able to import third party security updates into the product, official website on Microsoft TechNet WSUS Product Team Blog
11.
Package manager
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A package manager deals with packages, distributions of software and data in archive files. Packages contain metadata, such as the name, description of its purpose, version number, vendor, checksum. Upon installation, metadata is stored in a package database. Package managers typically maintain a database of software dependencies and version information to prevent software mismatches and they work closely with software repositories, binary repository managers, and app stores. Package managers are designed to eliminate the need for manual installs, a software package is an archive file containing a computer program as well as necessary metadata for its deployment. The computer program can be in source code that has to be compiled, Package metadata include package description, package version, and dependencies. Package managers are charged with the task of finding, installing, maintaining or uninstalling software packages upon the users command, in these systems, complex relationships between different packages requiring different versions of libraries results in a challenge colloquially known as dependency hell. On Microsoft Windows systems, this is also called DLL hell when working with dynamically linked libraries, good package management is vital on these systems. System administrators may install and maintain software using other than package management software. For example, an administrator may download unpackaged source code, compile it. This may cause the state of the system to fall out of synchronization with the state of the package managers database. The local administrator will be required to take measures, such as manually managing some dependencies or integrating the changes into the package manager. There are tools available to ensure that locally compiled packages are integrated with the package management, particularly troublesome with software upgrades are upgrades of configuration files. There are exceptions to this that usually apply to kernel configuration, problems can be caused if the format of configuration files changes. For instance, if the old configuration file does not explicitly disable new options that should be disabled, some package managers, such as Debians dpkg, allow configuration during installation. In other situations, it is desirable to install packages with the configuration and then overwrite this configuration, for instance. This kind of pre-configured installation is also supported by dpkg, to give users more control over the kinds of software that they are allowing to be installed on their system, software is often downloaded from a number of software repositories. This process is called version pinning
12.
Windows Installer
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Windows Installer is a software component and application programming interface of Microsoft Windows used for the installation, maintenance, and removal of software. Windows Installer contains significant changes from its predecessor, Setup API, new features include a GUI framework and automatic generation of the uninstallation sequence. Windows Installer is positioned as an alternative to stand-alone executable installer frameworks such as versions of InstallShield. Important features such as rollback and versioning depend on a consistent internal database for reliable operation, furthermore, Windows Installer facilitates the principle of least privilege by performing software installations by proxy for unprivileged users. A package describes the installation of one or more products and is universally identified by a GUID. A product is made up of components, grouped into features, Windows Installer does not handle dependencies between products. A single, installed, working program is a product, a product is identified by a unique GUID providing an authoritative identity throughout the world. The GUID, in combination with the number, allows for release management of the products files. A package includes the package logic and other metadata that relates to how the package executes when running, for example, changing an EXE file in the product may require the ProductCode or ProductVersion to be changed for the release management. However, merely changing or adding a condition would still require the PackageCode to change for release management of the MSI file itself. A feature is a group of components. A feature may contain any number of components and other sub-features, smaller packages can consist of a single feature. More complex installers may display a custom setup dialog box, from which the user can select which features to install or remove, the package author defines the product features. A word processor, for example, might place the programs core file into one feature, a component is the basic unit of a product. Each component is treated by Windows Installer as a unit, the installer cannot install just part of a component. Components can contain files, folders, COM components, registry keys. The user does not directly interact with components, components are identified globally by GUIDs, thus the same component can be shared among several features of the same package or multiple packages, ideally through the use of Merge Modules. A key path is a file, registry key, or ODBC data source that the package author specifies as critical for a given component
13.
Universal Windows Platform apps
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UWP apps are primarily purchased and downloaded via the Windows Store. Windows apps first became available under the name Metro-style apps when the Windows Store launched in 2012 and were marketed with Windows 8, in Windows 8. x, Metro-style apps do not run in a window. Instead, they occupy the entire screen or are snapped to one side, in which case they occupy the entire height of the screen. They have no bar, system menu, window borders or control buttons. Command interfaces like scroll bars are usually hidden at first, menus are located in the settings charm. Metro-style apps use the UI controls of Windows 8. x and typically follow Windows 8. x UI guidelines, such as horizontal scrolling and the inclusion of edge-UIs, like the app bar. In response to criticism from customers, in Windows 8.1, the hamburger menu button on their title bar gives access to the charms. For most users, the point of entry of Metro-style apps is Windows Store. Enterprises operating a Windows domain infrastructure may enter into a contract with Microsoft that allows them to sideload their line-of-business Metro-style apps, Metro-style apps are the only third-party apps that run on Windows RT. Traditional third-party apps do not run on this operating system, before Windows 8, computer programs were identified by their static computer icons. Windows taskbar was responsible for representing every app that had a window when they run, Metro-style apps, however, are identified by their tiles that can show their icon and also other dynamic contents. In addition, in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 RTM, they are not shown on the Windows taskbar when they run, Windows 8.1 Update restored taskbar icons for Metro-style apps. There is no set limit on how many copies of desktop apps can run simultaneously, for example, one user may run as many copies of programs such as Notepad, Paint or Firefox as the system resources support. However, in Windows 8, only one copy of Metro-style apps may run at any given time, Windows 10 brings significant changes to how UWP apps look and work. How UWP apps look depends on the app itself, UWP apps built specifically for Windows 10 typically have a distinct look and feel, as they use new UI controls that look different from those of previous versions of Windows. The exception to this are apps that use custom UI, which is especially the case with video games, apps designed for Windows 8. x look significantly different from those designed for Windows 10. UWP apps can also look almost identical to traditional desktop apps and these are legacy desktop apps that are converted to the UWP apps and distributed using APPX. In Windows 10, most UWP apps, even those designed for Windows 8. x, are run in floating windows, Windows 10 also introduced Continuum or Tablet Mode
14.
ARM architecture
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ARM, originally Acorn RISC Machine, later Advanced RISC Machine, is a family of reduced instruction set computing architectures for computer processors, configured for various environments. It also designs cores that implement this instruction set and licenses these designs to a number of companies that incorporate those core designs into their own products, a RISC-based computer design approach means processors require fewer transistors than typical complex instruction set computing x86 processors in most personal computers. This approach reduces costs, heat and power use and these characteristics are desirable for light, portable, battery-powered devices—including smartphones, laptops and tablet computers, and other embedded systems. For supercomputers, which large amounts of electricity, ARM could also be a power-efficient solution. ARM Holdings periodically releases updates to architectures and core designs, some older cores can also provide hardware execution of Java bytecodes. The ARMv8-A architecture, announced in October 2011, adds support for a 64-bit address space, with over 100 billion ARM processors produced as of 2017, ARM is the most widely used instruction set architecture in terms of quantity produced. Currently, the widely used Cortex cores, older classic cores, the British computer manufacturer Acorn Computers first developed the Acorn RISC Machine architecture in the 1980s to use in its personal computers. Its first ARM-based products were coprocessor modules for the BBC Micro series of computers, according to Sophie Wilson, all the tested processors at that time performed about the same, with about a 4 Mbit/second bandwidth. After testing all available processors and finding them lacking, Acorn decided it needed a new architecture, inspired by white papers on the Berkeley RISC project, Acorn considered designing its own processor. Wilson developed the set, writing a simulation of the processor in BBC BASIC that ran on a BBC Micro with a 6502 second processor. This convinced Acorn engineers they were on the right track, Wilson approached Acorns CEO, Hermann Hauser, and requested more resources. Hauser gave his approval and assembled a team to implement Wilsons model in hardware. The official Acorn RISC Machine project started in October 1983 and they chose VLSI Technology as the silicon partner, as they were a source of ROMs and custom chips for Acorn. Wilson and Furber led the design and they implemented it with a similar efficiency ethos as the 6502. A key design goal was achieving low-latency input/output handling like the 6502, the 6502s memory access architecture had let developers produce fast machines without costly direct memory access hardware. The first samples of ARM silicon worked properly when first received and tested on 26 April 1985, Wilson subsequently rewrote BBC BASIC in ARM assembly language. The in-depth knowledge gained from designing the instruction set enabled the code to be very dense, the original aim of a principally ARM-based computer was achieved in 1987 with the release of the Acorn Archimedes. In 1992, Acorn once more won the Queens Award for Technology for the ARM, the ARM2 featured a 32-bit data bus, 26-bit address space and 27 32-bit registers
15.
Itanium
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Itanium is a family of 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture. Intel markets the processors for servers and high-performance computing systems. The Itanium architecture originated at Hewlett-Packard, and was jointly developed by HP. Itanium-based systems have produced by HP and several other manufacturers. In 2008, Itanium was the fourth-most deployed microprocessor architecture for enterprise-class systems, behind x86-64, Power Architecture, the currently shipping Itanium processor generation, Poulson, was released on November 8,2012. In February 2017, Intel began releasing its successor, Kittson, to test customers, as Intel has not provided a roadmap beyond it and Hewlett-Packard is the only remaining major Itanium vendor, press and analysts have speculated that it will be the last Itanium generation. In 1989, HP determined that Reduced Instruction Set Computing architectures were approaching a processing limit at one instruction per cycle, HP researchers investigated a new architecture, later named Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing, that allows the processor to execute multiple instructions in each clock cycle. EPIC implements a form of very long instruction word architecture, in which a single instruction word contains multiple instructions, Intel was willing to undertake a very large development effort on IA-64 in the expectation that the resulting microprocessor would be used by the majority of enterprise systems manufacturers. HP and Intel initiated a joint development effort with a goal of delivering the first product, Merced. Compaq and Silicon Graphics decided to further development of the Alpha. Several groups developed operating systems for the architecture, including Microsoft Windows, OpenVMS, Linux, and UNIX variants such as HP-UX, Solaris, Tru64 UNIX, and Monterey/64. By 1997, it was apparent that the IA-64 architecture and the compiler were much more difficult to implement than originally thought, technical difficulties included the very high transistor counts needed to support the wide instruction words and the large caches. There were also structural problems within the project, as the two parts of the joint team used different methodologies and had different priorities. Since Merced was the first EPIC processor, the development effort encountered more unanticipated problems than the team was accustomed to, in addition, the EPIC concept depends on compiler capabilities that had never been implemented before, so more research was needed. Intel announced the name of the processor, Itanium, on October 4,1999. Within hours, the name Itanic had been coined on a Usenet newsgroup, a reference to Titanic, by the time Itanium was released in June 2001, its performance was not superior to competing RISC and CISC processors. Itanium competed at the low-end with servers based on x86 processors, Intel repositioned Itanium to focus on high-end business and HPC computing, attempting to duplicate x86s successful horizontal market. POWER and SPARC remained strong, while the 32-bit x86 architecture continued to grow into the enterprise space, only a few thousand systems using the original Merced Itanium processor were sold, due to relatively poor performance, high cost and limited software availability
16.
X86-64
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X86-64 is the 64-bit version of the x86 instruction set. It supports vastly larger amounts of memory and physical memory than is possible on its 32-bit predecessors. X86-64 also provides 64-bit general-purpose registers and numerous other enhancements and it is fully backward compatible with 16-bit and 32-bit x86 code. The original specification, created by AMD and released in 2000, has been implemented by AMD, Intel, the AMD K8 processor was the first to implement the architecture, this was the first significant addition to the x86 architecture designed by a company other than Intel. Intel was forced to suit and introduced a modified NetBurst family which was fully software-compatible with AMDs design. VIA Technologies introduced x86-64 in their VIA Isaiah architecture, with the VIA Nano, the x86-64 specification is distinct from the Intel Itanium architecture, which is not compatible on the native instruction set level with the x86 architecture. AMD64 was created as an alternative to the radically different IA-64 architecture, the first AMD64-based processor, the Opteron, was released in April 2003. AMDs processors implementing the AMD64 architecture include Opteron, Athlon 64, Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64 FX, Athlon II, Turion 64, Turion 64 X2, Sempron, Phenom, Phenom II, FX, Fusion and Ryzen. The primary defining characteristic of AMD64 is the availability of 64-bit general-purpose processor registers, 64-bit integer arithmetic and logical operations, the designers took the opportunity to make other improvements as well. Some of the most significant changes are described below, pushes and pops on the stack default to 8-byte strides, and pointers are 8 bytes wide. Additional registers In addition to increasing the size of the general-purpose registers, AMD64 still has fewer registers than many common RISC instruction sets or VLIW-like machines such as the IA-64. However, an AMD64 implementation may have far more internal registers than the number of architectural registers exposed by the instruction set, additional XMM registers Similarly, the number of 128-bit XMM registers is also increased from 8 to 16. Larger virtual address space The AMD64 architecture defines a 64-bit virtual address format and this allows up to 256 TB of virtual address space. The architecture definition allows this limit to be raised in future implementations to the full 64 bits and this is compared to just 4 GB for the x86. This means that very large files can be operated on by mapping the entire file into the address space, rather than having to map regions of the file into. Larger physical address space The original implementation of the AMD64 architecture implemented 40-bit physical addresses, current implementations of the AMD64 architecture extend this to 48-bit physical addresses and therefore can address up to 256 TB of RAM. The architecture permits extending this to 52 bits in the future, for comparison, 32-bit x86 processors are limited to 64 GB of RAM in Physical Address Extension mode, or 4 GB of RAM without PAE mode. Any implementation therefore allows the physical address limit as under long mode
17.
DEC Alpha
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Alpha was implemented in microprocessors originally developed and fabricated by DEC. These microprocessors were most prominently used in a variety of DEC workstations and servers, several third-party vendors also produced Alpha systems, including PC form factor motherboards. Operating systems that supported Alpha included OpenVMS, Tru64 UNIX, Windows NT, Linux, BSD UNIX, Plan 9 from Bell Labs, as well as the L4Ka, the Alpha architecture was sold, along with most parts of DEC, to Compaq in 1998. Alpha was born out of an earlier RISC project named PRISM, PRISM was intended to be a flexible design, supporting both Unix-like applications, as well as Digitals existing VMS programs from the VAX after minor conversion. A new Unix-like operating system known as Mica would run applications natively, during development, the Palo Alto design team were working on a Unix-only workstation that originally included the PRISM. DEC management doubted the need to produce a new architecture to replace their existing VAX and DECstation lines. By the time of cancellation, however, second-generation RISC chips were offering much better price/performance ratios than the VAX lineup and it was clear a third generation would completely outperform the VAX in all ways, not just on cost. Another study was started to see if a new RISC architecture could be defined that could support the VMS operating system. The new design used most of the basic PRISM concepts, but was re-tuned to allow VMS and VMS programs to run at speed with no conversion at all. The decision was made to upgrade the design to a full 64-bit implementation from PRISMs 32-bit. Eventually that new architecture became Alpha, the primary Alpha instruction set architects were Richard L. Sites and Richard T. Witek. The PRISMs Epicode was developed into the Alphas PALcode, providing an interface to platform-. The main contribution of Alpha to the industry, and the main reason for its performance, was not so much the architecture. At that time, the industry was dominated by automated design. The chip designers at Digital continued pursuing sophisticated manual circuit design in order to deal with the overly complex VAX architecture and these chips caused a renaissance of custom circuit design within the microprocessor design community. Originally, the Alpha processors were designated the DECchip 21x64 series, the first two digits,21 signifies the 21st century, and the last two digits,64 signifies 64 bits. The Alpha was designed as 64-bit from the start and there is no 32-bit version, the middle digit corresponded to the generation of the Alpha architecture. The first few generations of the Alpha chips were some of the most innovative of their time, the first version, the Alpha 21064 or EV4, was the first CMOS microprocessor whose operating frequency rivalled higher-powered ECL minicomputers and mainframes
18.
MIPS architecture
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MIPS is a reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by MIPS Technologies. The early MIPS architectures were 32-bit, with 64-bit versions added later, multiple revisions of the MIPS instruction set exist, including MIPS I, MIPS II, MIPS III, MIPS IV, MIPS V, MIPS32, and MIPS64. The current revisions are MIPS32 and MIPS64, MIPS32 and MIPS64 define a control register set as well as the instruction set. Computer architecture courses in universities and technical schools often study the MIPS architecture, the architecture greatly influenced later RISC architectures such as Alpha. It used to be popular in supercomputers but all systems have dropped off the TOP500 list. Until late 2006, they were used in many of SGIs computer products. MIPS implementations were also used by Digital Equipment Corporation, NEC, Pyramid Technology, Siemens Nixdorf, in the mid to late 1990s, it was estimated that one in three RISC microprocessors produced was a MIPS implementation. Windows NT supported MIPS until the release of Windows NT4.0 SP3 in 1997, MIPS is a modular architecture supporting up to four coprocessors. In MIPS terminology, COP0 is the System Control Coprocessor, COP1 is an optional FPU, for example, in the original Playstation game console, COP0 is the System Control Coprocessor and COP2 is Geometry Transformation Engine. In the Playstation 2 game console, COP0 is a Toshiba R5900 chip, COP1 is a FPU, MIPS is a load-store architecture, meaning it only performs arithmetic and logic operations between CPU registers, requiring load/store instructions to access memory. Processors based upon the MIPS instruction set have been in production since 1988, over time several enhancements of the instruction set were made. The different revisions which have introduced are MIPS I, MIPS II, MIPS III, MIPS IV. Each revision is a superset of its predecessors, when MIPS Technologies was spun out of Silicon Graphics again in 1998, they refocused on the embedded market. At that time, this property was found to be a problem, and the architecture definition was changed to define a 32-bit MIPS32. Introduced in 1985 with the R2000, introduced in 1990 with the R6000. Introduced in 1992 in the R4000 and it adds 64-bit registers and integer instructions and a floating point square root instruction. MIPS IV is the version of the architecture. It is a superset of MIPS III and is compatible with all existing versions of MIPS, the first implementation of MIPS IV was the R8000, which was introduced in 1994
19.
PowerPC
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PowerPC is a RISC instruction set architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM. PowerPC was the cornerstone of AIMs PReP and Common Hardware Reference Platform initiatives in the 1990s and it has since become niche in personal computers, but remain popular as embedded and high-performance processors. Its use in game consoles and embedded applications provided an array of uses. In addition, PowerPC CPUs are still used in AmigaOne and third party AmigaOS4 personal computers, the history of RISC began with IBMs 801 research project, on which John Cocke was the lead developer, where he developed the concepts of RISC in 1975–78. 801-based microprocessors were used in a number of IBM embedded products, the RT was a rapid design implementing the RISC architecture. The result was the POWER instruction set architecture, introduced with the RISC System/6000 in early 1990, the original POWER microprocessor, one of the first superscalar RISC implementations, was a high performance, multi-chip design. IBM soon realized that a microprocessor was needed in order to scale its RS/6000 line from lower-end to high-end machines. Work on a one-chip POWER microprocessor, designated the RSC began, in early 1991, IBM realized its design could potentially become a high-volume microprocessor used across the industry. IBM approached Apple with the goal of collaborating on the development of a family of single-chip microprocessors based on the POWER architecture and this three-way collaboration became known as AIM alliance, for Apple, IBM, Motorola. In 1991, the PowerPC was just one facet of an alliance among these three companies. The PowerPC chip was one of joint ventures involving the three, in their efforts to counter the growing Microsoft-Intel dominance of personal computing. For Motorola, POWER looked like an unbelievable deal and it allowed them to sell a widely tested and powerful RISC CPU for little design cash on their own part. It also maintained ties with an important customer, Apple, and seemed to offer the possibility of adding IBM too, at this point Motorola already had its own RISC design in the form of the 88000 which was doing poorly in the market. Motorola was doing well with their 68000 family and the majority of the funding was focused on this, the 88000 effort was somewhat starved for resources. However, the 88000 was already in production, Data General was shipping 88000 machines, the 88000 had also achieved a number of embedded design wins in telecom applications. The result of various requirements was the PowerPC specification. The differences between the earlier POWER instruction set and PowerPC is outlined in Appendix E of the manual for PowerPC ISA v.2.02, when the first PowerPC products reached the market, they were met with enthusiasm. In addition to Apple, both IBM and the Motorola Computer Group offered systems built around the processors, Microsoft released Windows NT3.51 for the architecture, which was used in Motorolas PowerPC servers, and Sun Microsystems offered a version of its Solaris OS
20.
Kernel (operating system)
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The kernel is a computer program that is the core of a computers operating system, with complete control over everything in the system. It is the first program loaded on start-up and it handles the rest of start-up as well as input/output requests from software, translating them into data-processing instructions for the central processing unit. It handles memory and peripherals like keyboards, monitors, printers, the critical code of the kernel is usually loaded into a protected area of memory, which prevents it from being overwritten by applications or other, more minor parts of the operating system. The kernel performs its tasks, such as running processes and handling interrupts, in contrast, everything a user does is in user space, writing text in a text editor, running programs in a GUI, etc. This separation prevents user data and kernel data from interfering with other and causing instability. The kernels interface is an abstraction layer. When a process makes requests of the kernel, it is called a system call, Kernel designs differ in how they manage these system calls and resources. A monolithic kernel runs all the operating instructions in the same address space. A microkernel runs most processes in space, for modularity. The kernel takes responsibility for deciding at any time which of the running programs should be allocated to the processor or processors. Random-access memory Random-access memory is used to both program instructions and data. Typically, both need to be present in memory in order for a program to execute, often multiple programs will want access to memory, frequently demanding more memory than the computer has available. The kernel is responsible for deciding which memory each process can use, input/output devices I/O devices include such peripherals as keyboards, mice, disk drives, printers, network adapters, and display devices. The kernel allocates requests from applications to perform I/O to an appropriate device, key aspects necessary in resource management are the definition of an execution domain and the protection mechanism used to mediate the accesses to the resources within a domain. Kernels also usually provide methods for synchronization and communication between processes called inter-process communication, finally, a kernel must provide running programs with a method to make requests to access these facilities. The kernel has full access to the memory and must allow processes to safely access this memory as they require it. Often the first step in doing this is virtual addressing, usually achieved by paging and/or segmentation, virtual addressing allows the kernel to make a given physical address appear to be another address, the virtual address. This allows every program to behave as if it is the one running
21.
Windows NT
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Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing, multi-user operating system, the first version of Windows NT was Windows NT3.1 and was produced for workstations and server computers. It was intended to complement consumer versions of Windows that were based on MS-DOS, gradually, the Windows NT family was expanded into Microsofts general-purpose operating system product line for all personal computers, deprecating the Windows 9x family. NT was formerly expanded to New Technology but no longer carries any specific meaning, starting with Windows 2000, NT was removed from the product name and is only included in the product version string. NT was the first purely 32-bit version of Windows, whereas its consumer-oriented counterparts, Windows 3. 1x and it is a multi-architecture operating system. Initially, it supported several CPU architectures, including IA-32, MIPS, DEC Alpha, PowerPC, the latest versions support x86 and ARM. This lineage is made clear in Cutlers foreword to Inside Windows NT by Helen Custer and it has been suggested that Dave Cutler intended the initialism WNT as a play on VMS, incrementing each letter by one. However, the project was intended as a follow-on to OS/2 and was referred to as NT OS/2 before receiving the Windows brand. One of the original NT developers, Mark Lucovsky, states that the name was taken from the original target processor—the Intel i860, the letters were dropped from the names of releases from Windows 2000 onwards, though Microsoft described that product as being Built on NT Technology. A main design goal of NT was hardware and software portability, the idea was to have a common code base with a custom Hardware Abstraction Layer for each platform. However, support for MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC was later dropped in Windows 2000, broad software compatibility was achieved with support for several API personalities, including Windows API, POSIX, and OS/2 APIs – the latter two were phased out starting with Windows XP. Partial MS-DOS compatibility was achieved via an integrated DOS Virtual Machine – although this feature is being phased out in the x86-64 architecture, NT supported per-object access control lists allowing a rich set of security permissions to be applied to systems and services. NT supported Windows network protocols, inheriting the previous OS/2 LAN Manager networking, Windows NT3.1 was the first version of Windows to use 32-bit flat virtual memory addressing on 32-bit processors. Its companion product, Windows 3.1, used segmented addressing, notably, in Windows NT3. x, several I/O driver subsystems, such as video and printing, were user-mode subsystems. In Windows NT4, the video, server, and printer spooler subsystems were moved into kernel mode, NTFS, a journaled, secure file system, was created for NT. Windows NT also allows for other file systems, starting with versions 3.1. Windows NT introduced its own model, the Windows NT driver model. With Windows 2000, the Windows NT driver model was enhanced to become the Windows Driver Model, which was first introduced with Windows 98, but was based on the NT driver model
22.
Hybrid kernel
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A hybrid kernel is an operating system kernel architecture that attempts to combine aspects and benefits of microkernel and monolithic kernel architectures used in computer operating systems. The traditional kernel categories are monolithic kernels and microkernels, the hybrid category is controversial, due to the similarity of hybrid kernels and ordinary monolithic kernels, the term has been dismissed by Linus Torvalds as simple marketing. The idea behind a hybrid kernel is to have a structure similar to that of a microkernel. In contrast to a microkernel, all operating system services in a hybrid kernel are still in kernel space, so there are none of the reliability benefits of having services in user space, as with a microkernel.1, and Xbox One. Conversely, the reason NT is not a system is because most of the system components run in the same address space as the kernel. The subsystems are not written to a particular OS personality, the primary operating system personality on Windows is the Windows API, which is always present. The emulation subsystem which implements the Windows personality is called the Client/Server Runtime Subsystem, on versions of NT prior to 4.0, this subsystem process also contained the window manager, graphics device interface and graphics device drivers. For performance reasons, however, in version 4.0 and later, as of 2007, one other operating system personality, UNIX, is offered as an optionally installed system component on certain versions of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003 R2. The associated subsystem process is the Subsystem for UNIX-Based Applications, which was part of a Windows add-on called Windows Services for UNIX. An OS/2 subsystem was supported in versions of Windows NT. The POSIX subsystem was supplanted by the UNIX subsystem, hence the identical executable name, in August 2016, Microsoft unveiled the latest Windows subsystem called the Linux Subsystem for Windows. This subsystem, available only on 64-bit Windows 10 version 1607 and this was intended so that developers could run their tools on Windows without having to emulate them, and thus requires developer mode to be enabled in Windows Settings. It is designed only to run applications, although a reddit user has discovered a way to run GUI applications or even an entire desktop environment with it. Certain applications that rely on the Linux kernel itself will not be able to run because it does not include the Linux kernel. Applications that run on NT are written to one of the OS personalities, an OS personality is implemented via a set of user-mode DLLs, which are mapped into application processes address spaces as required, together with an emulation subsystem server process. XNU is the kernel that Apple Inc. acquired and developed for use in the OS X and iOS operating systems and released as free, XNU is an acronym for X is Not Unix. XNU runs on ARM as part of iOS, IA-32, archived from the original on March 15,2006
23.
Windows Embedded Compact
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Windows Embedded Compact, formerly Windows Embedded CE and Windows CE, is an operating system subfamily developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows Embedded family of products. Unlike Windows Embedded Standard, which is based on Windows NT, Microsoft licenses Windows CE to original equipment manufacturers, who can modify and create their own user interfaces and experiences, with Windows CE providing the technical foundation to do so. The current version of Windows Embedded Compact supports x86 and ARM processors with board support package directly, the MIPS and SHx architectures had support prior to version 7.0. Windows CE is optimized for devices that have memory, a Windows CE kernel may run with one megabyte of memory. Devices are often configured without disk storage, and may be configured as a system that does not allow for end-user extension. Windows CE conforms to the definition of a operating system. From Version 3 and onward, the system supports 256 priority levels, the fundamental unit of execution is the thread. This helps to simplify the interface and improve execution time, since then, Windows CE has evolved into a component-based, embedded, real-time operating system. It is no longer targeted solely at hand-held computers, Windows CE even powered select games for the Dreamcast, was the operating system of the Gizmondo handheld, and can partially run on modified Xbox game consoles. A distinctive feature of Windows CE compared to other Microsoft operating systems is that parts of it are offered in source code form. First, source code was offered to several vendors, so they could adjust it to their hardware, then products like Platform Builder offered several components in source code form to the general public. However, a number of components that do not need adaptation to specific hardware environments are still distributed in binary only form. Windows Embedded Compact was formerly known as Windows CE, the name changed once in 2006, with the release of Windows Embedded CE6.0, and again in 2011, with the release of Windows Embedded Compact 7. Windows CE was originally announced by Microsoft at the COMDEX expo in 1996 and was demonstrated on stage by Bill Gates, Microsoft had been testing Pegasus in early 1995 and released a strict reference platform to several hardware partners. Each window took over the full display, navigation was done by tapping or double tapping on an item. A contextual menu was available by the user pressing the ALT key. Windows CE1.0 did not include a cascading Start menu unlike Windows 95, Microsoft released the Windows CE1.0 Power Toys that included a cascading menu icon that appeared in the system tray. The release of Windows CE2.0 was well received, Microsoft learned its lessons from consumer feedback of Windows CE1.0 and made many improvements to the operating system
24.
Windows 9x
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This includes all versions of Windows 95 and Windows 98. Windows 9x is predominantly known for its use in desktops, in 1998, Windows made up 82% of operating system market share. Internal release versions for versions of Windows 9x are 4. x, previous MS-DOS based versions of Windows used version numbers of 3.2 or lower. Windows NT, which was aimed at professional users such as networks and businesses, used a similar, the final version of Windows 9x was Windows ME, released in September 2000 with an internal version number of 4.9. All future versions of Windows, starting with Windows XP, would be based on the Windows NT codebase, the first independent version of Microsoft Windows, version 1.0, released on 20 November 1985, achieved little popularity. It was originally going to be called Interface Manager but Rowland Hanson, Windows 1.0 was not a complete operating system, but rather an operating environment that extended MS-DOS, and shared the latters inherent flaws and problems. The second release of Microsoft Windows, version 2.0, came out on 9 December 1987, and used the memory model. In such a configuration, it could run under another multitasking system like DESQview, Microsoft Windows scored a significant success with Windows 3.0, released in 1990. Microsoft developed Windows 3.1, which included minor improvements to Windows 3.0. It also excluded support for Real mode, and only ran on an 80286 or better processor. Later Microsoft also released Windows 3.11, a touch-up to Windows 3.1 which included all of the patches and updates that followed the release of Windows 3.1 in 1992, meanwhile, Microsoft continued to develop Windows NT. The main architect of the system was Dave Cutler, one of the architects of VMS at Digital Equipment Corporation. Microsoft hired him in August 1988 to create a successor to OS/2, Microsoft announced at the conference its intentions to develop a successor to both Windows NT and Windows 3. 1s replacement, which would unify the two into one operating system. In hindsight, Cairo was a more difficult project than Microsoft had anticipated and, as a result, NT. After Windows 3.11, Microsoft began to develop a new consumer oriented version of the operating system code-named Chicago, Chicago was designed to have support for 32-bit preemptive multitasking like OS/2 and Windows NT, although a 16-bit kernel would remain for the sake of backward compatibility. The Win32 API first introduced with Windows NT was adopted as the standard 32-bit programming interface, a new GUI was not originally planned as part of the release, although elements of the Cairo user interface were borrowed and added as other aspects of the release slipped. Microsoft did not change all of the Windows code to 32-bit, parts of it remained 16-bit for reasons of compatibility, performance and these factors immediately began to impact the operating systems efficiency and stability. Microsoft marketing adopted Windows 95 as the name for Chicago when it was released on August 24,1995
25.
Monolithic kernel
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A monolithic kernel is an operating system architecture where the entire operating system is working in kernel space and is alone in supervisor mode. The monolithic model differs from other operating system architectures in that it defines a high-level virtual interface over computer hardware. A set of primitives or system calls implement all operating system such as process management, concurrency. Device drivers can be added to the kernel as modules and this modularity of the operating system is at the binary level and not at the architecture level. Modular monolithic operating systems are not to be confused with the level of modularity inherent in Server-Client operating systems which use microkernels. Practically speaking, dynamically loading modules is simply a more flexible way of handling the operating system image at runtime — as opposed to rebooting with a different operating system image, the modules allow easy extension of the operating systems capabilities as required. Dynamically loadable modules incur a small overhead when compared to building the module into the system image. Namely, an unloaded module need not be stored in random access memory
26.
MS-DOS
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MS-DOS is a discontinued operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. MS-DOS resulted from a request in 1981 by IBM for a system to use in its IBM PC range of personal computers. Microsoft quickly bought the rights to 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, IBM licensed and released it in August 1981 as PC DOS1.0 for use in their PCs. During its life, several competing products were released for the x86 platform and it was also the underlying basic operating system on which early versions of Windows ran as a GUI. It is a operating system, and consumes negligible installation space. MS-DOS was a form of 86-DOS – owned by Seattle Computer Products. This first version was shipped in August 1980, Microsoft, which needed an operating system for the IBM Personal Computer hired Tim Paterson in May 1981 and bought 86-DOS1.10 for $75,000 in July of the same year. Microsoft kept the number, but renamed it MS-DOS. They also licensed MS-DOS1. 10/1.14 to IBM, within a year Microsoft licensed MS-DOS to over 70 other companies. It was designed to be an OS that could run on any 8086-family computer, thus, there were many different versions of MS-DOS for different hardware, and there is a major distinction between an IBM-compatible machine and an MS-DOS machine. This design would have worked well for compatibility, if application programs had only used MS-DOS services to perform device I/O, Microsoft omitted multi-user support from MS-DOS because Microsofts Unix-based operating system, Xenix, was fully multi-user. After the breakup of the Bell System, however, AT&T Computer Systems started selling UNIX System V, believing that it could not compete with AT&T in the Unix market, Microsoft abandoned Xenix, and in 1987 transferred ownership of Xenix to the Santa Cruz Operation. On 25 March 2014, Microsoft made the code to SCP MS-DOS1.25, as an April Fools joke in 2015, Microsoft Mobile launched a Windows Phone application called MS-DOS Mobile which was presented as a new mobile operating system and worked similar to MS-DOS. Version 3.1 – Support for Microsoft Networks Version 3.2 – First version to support 3.5 inch,720 kB floppy drives and diskettes. Version 3.21 Version 3.22 – Version 3.25 Version 3.3 – First version to support 3.5 inch,1.44 MB floppy drives and diskettes, Version 3. 3a Version 3.31 – supports FAT16B and larger drives. MS-DOS4.0 and MS-DOS4.1 – A separate branch of development with additional multitasking features and it is unrelated to any later versions, including versions 4.00 and 4.01 listed below MS-DOS4. x – includes a graphical/mouse interface. It had many bugs and compatibility issues. Version 4.00 – First version to support a hard disk partition that is greater than 32 MiB. Version 4.01 – Microsoft rewritten Version 4.00 released under MS-DOS label, First version to introduce volume serial number when formatting hard disks and floppy disks
27.
User interface
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The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. Examples of this concept of user interfaces include the interactive aspects of computer operating systems, hand tools, heavy machinery operator controls. The design considerations applicable when creating user interfaces are related to or involve such disciplines as ergonomics and psychology. Generally, the goal of user interface design is to produce a user interface makes it easy, efficient. This generally means that the needs to provide minimal input to achieve the desired output. Other terms for user interface are man–machine interface and when the machine in question is a computer human–computer interface, the user interface or human–machine interface is the part of the machine that handles the human–machine interaction. Membrane switches, rubber keypads and touchscreens are examples of the part of the Human Machine Interface which we can see. In complex systems, the interface is typically computerized. The term human–computer interface refers to this kind of system, in the context of computing the term typically extends as well to the software dedicated to control the physical elements used for human-computer interaction. The engineering of the interfaces is enhanced by considering ergonomics. The corresponding disciplines are human factors engineering and usability engineering, which is part of systems engineering, tools used for incorporating human factors in the interface design are developed based on knowledge of computer science, such as computer graphics, operating systems, programming languages. Nowadays, we use the graphical user interface for human–machine interface on computers. There is a difference between a user interface and an interface or a human–machine interface. A human-machine interface is typically local to one machine or piece of equipment, an operator interface is the interface method by which multiple equipment that are linked by a host control system is accessed or controlled. The system may expose several user interfaces to serve different kinds of users, for example, a computerized library database might provide two user interfaces, one for library patrons and the other for library personnel. The user interface of a system, a vehicle or an industrial installation is sometimes referred to as the human–machine interface. HMI is a modification of the original term MMI, in practice, the abbreviation MMI is still frequently used although some may claim that MMI stands for something different now. Another abbreviation is HCI, but is commonly used for human–computer interaction
28.
Windows shell
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The Windows shell provides users with access to a wide variety of objects necessary for running applications and managing the operating system. The most numerous and familiar of these objects are the folders, there are also a number of virtual objects that allow the user to perform tasks such as sending files to remote printers or accessing the Recycle Bin. The Shell organizes these objects into a hierarchical namespace and provides users and applications with a consistent and efficient way to access, Windows Desktop is a full-screen window rendered behind all other windows. It hosts the users wallpaper and an array of computer icons representing, Files and folders, Users and software may store computer files, naturally, on a newly-installed version of Windows, such items do not exist. Software installers commonly place files known as shortcuts on the desktop, Users may store personal documents on the desktop. Special folders, Apart from ordinary files and folders, special folders may appear on the desktop, unlike ordinary folders, special folders do not point to an absolute location on a hard disk drive. They may even open windows that do not resemble a folder at all, Starting with Windows Vista and Windows 7, Windows Desktop Gadgets may appear on the desktop. These gadgets are discontinued in newer versions of Windows and Windows Server, Windows taskbar is a toolbar-like element that by default, appears as a horizontal bar at the bottom of the desktop. It may be relocated to the top, left or right edges of the screen, Starting with Windows 98, its size can be changed. The taskbar can be configured to stay on top of all applications or to collapse, depending on the version of operating system installed, the following elements may appear on the taskbar respectively from left to right, Start button, Provides access to the Start menu. Removed in Windows 8, in favor of the Start charm, Quick Links menu, Added in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. Invoked by right-clicking on the Start button, or pressing ⊞ Win+X, grants access to several frequently used features of Windows, such as accessing the desktop or File Explorer. List of open windows, Along the length of the taskbar, and once pinned, they will remain even after their respective windows are closed. Until Windows 7, the system displayed active windows as depressed buttons in this list. Starting with Windows 7, the icon for each window is framed by a translucent box. However, the taskbar can be changed to more as it does with older versions of Windows. Shortcuts, An update to Windows 95 and Windows NT4 added a Quick Launch Bar that could hold file shortcuts, Windows 7 merged this area into the list of open windows by adding pinning and jump list features. By default, Windows volume control, network status, Action Center, date, show desktop button, Allows users to access their desktops
29.
Software license
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A software license is a legal instrument governing the use or redistribution of software. Under United States copyright law all software is copyright protected, in code as also object code form. The only exception is software in the public domain, most distributed software can be categorized according to its license type. Two common categories for software under copyright law, and therefore with licenses which grant the licensee specific rights, are proprietary software and free, unlicensed software outside the copyright protection is either public domain software or software which is non-distributed, non-licensed and handled as internal business trade secret. Contrary to popular belief, distributed unlicensed software is copyright protected. Examples for this are unauthorized software leaks or software projects which are placed on public software repositories like GitHub without specified license. As voluntarily handing software into the domain is problematic in some international law domains, there are also licenses granting PD-like rights. Therefore, the owner of a copy of software is legally entitled to use that copy of software. Hence, if the end-user of software is the owner of the respective copy, as many proprietary licenses only enumerate the rights that the user already has under 17 U. S. C. §117, and yet proclaim to take away from the user. Proprietary software licenses often proclaim to give software publishers more control over the way their software is used by keeping ownership of each copy of software with the software publisher. The form of the relationship if it is a lease or a purchase, for example UMG v. Augusto or Vernor v. Autodesk. The ownership of goods, like software applications and video games, is challenged by licensed. The Swiss based company UsedSoft innovated the resale of business software and this feature of proprietary software licenses means that certain rights regarding the software are reserved by the software publisher. Therefore, it is typical of EULAs to include terms which define the uses of the software, the most significant effect of this form of licensing is that, if ownership of the software remains with the software publisher, then the end-user must accept the software license. In other words, without acceptance of the license, the end-user may not use the software at all, one example of such a proprietary software license is the license for Microsoft Windows. The most common licensing models are per single user or per user in the appropriate volume discount level, Licensing per concurrent/floating user also occurs, where all users in a network have access to the program, but only a specific number at the same time. Another license model is licensing per dongle which allows the owner of the dongle to use the program on any computer, Licensing per server, CPU or points, regardless the number of users, is common practice as well as site or company licenses
30.
Graphical user interface
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GUIs were introduced in reaction to the perceived steep learning curve of command-line interfaces, which require commands to be typed on a computer keyboard. The actions in a GUI are usually performed through direct manipulation of the graphical elements, beyond computers, GUIs are used in many handheld mobile devices such as MP3 players, portable media players, gaming devices, smartphones and smaller household, office and industrial controls. Designing the visual composition and temporal behavior of a GUI is an important part of application programming in the area of human–computer interaction. Its goal is to enhance the efficiency and ease of use for the logical design of a stored program. Methods of user-centered design are used to ensure that the language introduced in the design is well-tailored to the tasks. The visible graphical interface features of an application are sometimes referred to as chrome or GUI, typically, users interact with information by manipulating visual widgets that allow for interactions appropriate to the kind of data they hold. The widgets of an interface are selected to support the actions necessary to achieve the goals of users. A model–view–controller allows a structure in which the interface is independent from and indirectly linked to application functions. This allows users to select or design a different skin at will, good user interface design relates to users more, and to system architecture less. Large widgets, such as windows, usually provide a frame or container for the main presentation content such as a web page, smaller ones usually act as a user-input tool. A GUI may be designed for the requirements of a market as application-specific graphical user interfaces. By the 1990s, cell phones and handheld game systems also employed application specific touchscreen GUIs, newer automobiles use GUIs in their navigation systems and multimedia centers, or navigation multimedia center combinations. Sample graphical desktop environments A GUI uses a combination of technologies and devices to provide a platform that users can interact with, a series of elements conforming a visual language have evolved to represent information stored in computers. This makes it easier for people with few computer skills to work with, the most common combination of such elements in GUIs is the windows, icons, menus, pointer paradigm, especially in personal computers. The WIMP style of interaction uses a virtual device to represent the position of a pointing device, most often a mouse. Available commands are compiled together in menus, and actions are performed making gestures with the pointing device, a window manager facilitates the interactions between windows, applications, and the windowing system. The windowing system handles hardware devices such as pointing devices, graphics hardware, window managers and other software combine to simulate the desktop environment with varying degrees of realism. Smaller mobile devices such as personal assistants and smartphones typically use the WIMP elements with different unifying metaphors, due to constraints in space
31.
Operating system
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An operating system is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources and provides common services for computer programs. All computer programs, excluding firmware, require a system to function. Operating systems are found on many devices that contain a computer – from cellular phones, the dominant desktop operating system is Microsoft Windows with a market share of around 83. 3%. MacOS by Apple Inc. is in place, and the varieties of Linux is in third position. Linux distributions are dominant in the server and supercomputing sectors, other specialized classes of operating systems, such as embedded and real-time systems, exist for many applications. A single-tasking system can run one program at a time. Multi-tasking may be characterized in preemptive and co-operative types, in preemptive multitasking, the operating system slices the CPU time and dedicates a slot to each of the programs. Unix-like operating systems, e. g. Solaris, Linux, cooperative multitasking is achieved by relying on each process to provide time to the other processes in a defined manner. 16-bit versions of Microsoft Windows used cooperative multi-tasking, 32-bit versions of both Windows NT and Win9x, used preemptive multi-tasking. Single-user operating systems have no facilities to distinguish users, but may allow multiple programs to run in tandem, a distributed operating system manages a group of distinct computers and makes them appear to be a single computer. The development of networked computers that could be linked and communicate with each other gave rise to distributed computing, distributed computations are carried out on more than one machine. When computers in a work in cooperation, they form a distributed system. The technique is used both in virtualization and cloud computing management, and is common in large server warehouses, embedded operating systems are designed to be used in embedded computer systems. They are designed to operate on small machines like PDAs with less autonomy and they are able to operate with a limited number of resources. They are very compact and extremely efficient by design, Windows CE and Minix 3 are some examples of embedded operating systems. A real-time operating system is a system that guarantees to process events or data by a specific moment in time. A real-time operating system may be single- or multi-tasking, but when multitasking, early computers were built to perform a series of single tasks, like a calculator. Basic operating system features were developed in the 1950s, such as resident monitor functions that could run different programs in succession to speed up processing
32.
Windows IoT
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Windows IoT, formerly Windows Embedded, is a family of operating systems from Microsoft designed for use in embedded systems. In mid-1998, Microsoft worked with VenturCom, for their Windows NT Embedded product, Windows NT Embedded 4.0 got its start in 1998 with a small team of developers at Microsoft. Minimum run-time images were as small as 9 MB for a system featuring the full Win32 API, shortly after release, in early 2000, Microsoft decided that it was best to take that architecture and make a new product leveraging the new Windows code. A new Windows Embedded team was formed, under the leadership of Bruce Beachman and he served as the Product Unit Manager of the first Windows Embedded – and started recruiting engineers within Microsoft. The team set their sights on this next version, a decision was made to stop development of Windows 2000 Embedded, and start work on a Windows XP Embedded product. Plans were drawn up, the team was expanded, and work started on Whistler Embedded, codenamed Mantis, the component count has risen from 250 to over 10, 000—most of them device-driver components. The feature set of the tools was enriched to include things like basic version control, component scripting. Tools were also added to make it easier to start with a slab of hardware. On August 26,2001, Beta 2 of Windows XP Embedded was released, the first test team manager was Bombo Sofa, who lead the first XPe Test team starting in 2000. Under Bruce Beachmans leadership, Microsoft shipped the first version of Windows Embedded at the DevCon / Windows Hardware Conference in 2001, Microsoft rebranded Windows Embedded to Windows IoT starting with the release of embedded versions of Windows 10. Windows IoT Mobile Enterprise, based on Windows 10 Mobile Enterprise, is the successor to Embedded Handheld, Windows IoT Core is considered by some to be the successor to Windows Embedded Compact, although it maintains very little compatibility with it. Optimized for smaller and lower cost industry devices, it is provided free of charge for use in devices like the Raspberry Pi for hobbyist use. Windows IoT Core Pro provides the ability to defer and control updates and is licensed only via distributors, Windows Embedded Compact is the version of Windows Embedded for very small computers and embedded systems, including consumer electronics devices like set-top boxes and video game consoles. Windows Embedded Compact is a modular operating system with a specialized kernel that can run in under 1 MB of memory. It comes with the Platform Builder tool that can be used to add modules to the image to create a custom installation. Windows Embedded Compact is available for ARM, MIPS, SuperH, Microsoft made available a specialized version of Windows Embedded Compact, known as Windows Mobile, for use in mobile phones. It is a image of Windows Embedded Compact along with specialized modules for use in Mobile phones. Windows Mobile was available in four variants, Windows Mobile Classic, Windows Mobile Standard and Windows Mobile Professional, modified versions of Windows Mobile were used for Portable Media Centers
33.
Windows Mobile
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Windows Mobile is a family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones and Pocket PCs. Its origins dated back to Windows CE in 1996, though Windows Mobile itself first appeared in 2000 as PocketPC2000 and it was renamed Windows Mobile in 2003, at which point it came in several versions and was aimed at business and enterprise consumers. By 2007, it was the most popular software in the U. S. In February 2010, facing competition from rival OSs including iOS and Android, as a result, Windows Mobile has been deprecated. Windows Phone is incompatible with Windows Mobile devices and software, the last version of Windows Mobile, released after the announcement of Windows Phone, was 6.5.5. After this, Microsoft ceased development on Windows Mobile, in order to concentrate on Windows Phone, similarly to its desktop counterpart, it comes bundled with a set of applications that perform basic tasks. Internet Explorer Mobile is the web browser, and Windows Media Player is the default media player used for playing digital media. The mobile version of Microsoft Office, is the office suite. Internet Connection Sharing, supported on compatible devices, allows the phone to share its Internet connection with computers via USB, Windows Mobile supports virtual private networking over PPTP protocol. Most devices with mobile connectivity also have a Radio Interface Layer, the Radio Interface Layer provides the system interface between the Cell Core layer within the Windows Mobile OS and the radio protocol stack used by the wireless modem hardware. This allows OEMs to integrate a variety of modems into their equipment, the user interface changed dramatically between versions, only retaining similar functionality. The Today Screen, later called the Home Screen, shows the current date, owner information, upcoming appointments, e-mails, the taskbar display the current time as well as the volume level. Devices with a cellular radio also show the strength on said taskbar. Windows Mobile is based on the Windows CE kernel and first appeared as the Pocket PC2000 operating system and it includes a suite of basic applications developed with the Microsoft Windows API, and is designed to have features and appearance somewhat similar to desktop versions of Windows. It allowed third party developers to develop software for Windows Mobile with no restrictions imposed by Microsoft, software applications were purchasable from Windows Marketplace for Mobile during the services lifespan. Most early Windows Mobile devices came with a stylus, which can be used to enter commands by tapping it on the screen, the primary touch input technology behind most devices were resistive touchscreens which often required a stylus for input. Later devices used capacitive sensing which does not require a stylus, along with touchscreens, a large variety of form factors existed for the platform. Some devices featured slideout keyboards, while others featured minimal face buttons, Microsofts work on handheld portable devices began with research projects in 1990, with the work on Windows CE beginning in 1992
34.
Windows Phone
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Windows Phone is a family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone features a new user interface derived from Metro design language, unlike Windows Mobile, it is primarily aimed at the consumer market rather than the enterprise market. It was first launched in October 2010 with Windows Phone 7, Windows Phone 8.1 is the latest public release of the operating system, released to manufacturing on April 14,2014. Work on a major Windows Mobile update may have begun as early as 2004 under the codename Photon, but work moved slowly, in 2008, Microsoft reorganized the Windows Mobile group and started work on a new mobile operating system. The product was to be released in 2009 as Windows Phone, one result was that the new OS would not be compatible with Windows Mobile applications. Lieberman said that Microsoft was attempting to look at the phone market in a new way. The event focused largely on setting up a new global mobile ecosystem, suggesting competition with Android, Elop stated the reason for choosing Windows Phone over Android, saying, the single most important word is differentiation. Entering the Android environment late, we knew we would have a hard time differentiating, while Nokia would have had more long-term creative control with Android, Elop enjoyed familiarity with his past company where he had been a top executive. Jo Harlow, whom Elop tapped to run Nokias smartphone business, rearranged her team to match the structure led by Microsofts VP of Windows Phone, Myerson was quoted as saying, I can trust her with what she tells me. She uses that same direct and genuine communication to motivate her team, the first Nokia Lumia Windows Phones, the Lumia 800 and Lumia 710, were announced in October 2011 at Nokia World 2011. At the Consumer Electronics Show in 2012 Nokia announced the Lumia 900, featuring a 4. 3-inch AMOLED ClearBlack display, the Lumia 900 was one of the first Windows Phones to support LTE and was released on AT&T on April 8. An international version launched in Q22012, with a UK launch in May 2012, the Lumia 610 was the first Nokia Windows Phone to run the Tango Variant and was aimed at emerging markets. On September 2,2013, Microsoft announced a deal to acquire Nokias mobile phone division outright, Microsoft managers revealed that the acquisition was made because Nokia was driving the development of the Windows Phone platform to better match their products. The merger was completed after regulatory approval in all markets in April 2014. As a result, Nokias hardware division is now a subsidiary of Microsoft operating under the name Microsoft Mobile, in February 2014, Nokia released the Nokia X series of smartphones, using a version of Android forked from the Android Open Source Project. Windows Phone 7 was announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, on February 15,2010, in 2011, Microsoft released Windows Phone 7.5 Mango. A minor update released in 2012 known as Tango, along with bug fixes. The update included a start screen, additional color schemes
35.
Shell (computing)
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In computing, a shell is a user interface for access to an operating systems services. In general, operating system shells use either a command-line interface or graphical user interface, depending on a computers role and it is named a shell because it is a layer around the operating system kernel. The design of a shell is also dictated by the employed computer periphery, such as keyboard, pointing device or touchscreen. CLIs are also easier to be operated via refreshable braille display, graphical shells place a low burden on beginning computer users, and they are characterized as being simple and easy to use. With the widespread adoption of programs with GUIs, the use of shells has gained greater adoption. Since graphical shells come with certain disadvantages, most GUI-enabled operating systems provide additional CLI shells. Operating systems provide services to their users, including file management, process management, batch processing. Most operating system shells are not direct interfaces to the underlying kernel, shells are actually special applications that use the kernel API in just the same way as it is used by other application programs. A shell manages the interaction by prompting users for input, interpreting their input. Since the operating system shell is actually an application, it may easily be replaced with another similar application, on Unix-like systems, Secure Shell protocol is usually used for text-based shells, while SSH tunneling can be used for X Window System–based graphical user interfaces. On Microsoft Windows, Remote Desktop Protocol can be used to provide GUI remote access, most operating system shells fall into one of two categories – command-line and graphical. Command line shells provide an interface to the operating system. Other possibilities, although not so common, include voice user interface, the relative merits of CLI- and GUI-based shells are often debated. A command-line interface is a system shell that uses alphanumeric characters typed on a keyboard to provide instructions and data to the operating system. Operating systems such as UNIX have a variety of shell programs with different commands, syntax. Application programs may also implement a command-line interface, for example, in Unix-like systems, the telnet program has a number of commands for controlling a link to a remote computer system. Since the commands to the program are made of the same keystrokes as the data being sent to a remote computer, an escape sequence can be defined, using either a special local keystroke that is never passed on but always interpreted by the local system. The program becomes modal, switching between interpreting commands from the keyboard or passing keystrokes on as data to be processed, a feature of many command-line shells is the ability to save sequences of commands for re-use
36.
Personal computer
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A personal computer is a multi-purpose electronic computer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. PCs are intended to be operated directly by a end-user, rather than by an expert or technician. In the 2010s, PCs are typically connected to the Internet, allowing access to the World Wide Web, personal computers may be connected to a local area network, either by a cable or a wireless connection. In the 2010s, a PC may be, a multi-component desktop computer, designed for use in a location a laptop computer, designed for easy portability or a tablet computer. In the 2010s, PCs run using a system, such as Microsoft Windows, Linux. The very earliest microcomputers, equipped with a front panel, required hand-loading of a program to load programs from external storage. Before long, automatic booting from permanent read-only memory became universal, in the 2010s, users have access to a wide range of commercial software, free software and free and open-source software, which are provided in ready-to-run or ready-to-compile form. Since the early 1990s, Microsoft operating systems and Intel hardware have dominated much of the computer market, first with MS-DOS. Alternatives to Microsofts Windows operating systems occupy a minority share of the industry and these include Apples OS X and free open-source Unix-like operating systems such as Linux and Berkeley Software Distribution. Advanced Micro Devices provides the alternative to Intels processors. PC is an initialism for personal computer, some PCs, including the OLPC XOs, are equipped with x86 or x64 processors but not designed to run Microsoft Windows. PC is used in contrast with Mac, an Apple Macintosh computer and this sense of the word is used in the Get a Mac advertisement campaign that ran between 2006 and 2009, as well as its rival, Im a PC campaign, that appeared in 2008. Since Apples transition to Intel processors starting 2005, all Macintosh computers are now PCs, the “brain” may one day come down to our level and help with our income-tax and book-keeping calculations. But this is speculation and there is no sign of it so far, in the history of computing there were many examples of computers designed to be used by one person, as opposed to terminals connected to mainframe computers. Using the narrow definition of operated by one person, the first personal computer was the ENIAC which became operational in 1946 and it did not meet further definitions of affordable or easy to use. An example of an early single-user computer was the LGP-30, created in 1956 by Stan Frankel and used for science and it came with a retail price of $47, 000—equivalent to about $414,000 today. Introduced at the 1965 New York Worlds Fair, the Programma 101 was a programmable calculator described in advertisements as a desktop computer. It was manufactured by the Italian company Olivetti and invented by the Italian engineer Pier Giorgio Perotto, the Soviet MIR series of computers was developed from 1965 to 1969 in a group headed by Victor Glushkov
37.
Usage share of operating systems
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The usage share of operating systems is the percentage of the operating systems used in computing devices. There are three big personal computing platforms, two of which claim over 1.4 billion users, Android and Windows, another one, Apples iOS and macOS combined, have over 1 billion users. Historically the desktop, meaning mainframes, were dominant, then Macintosh desktops became dominant, then for a 25 year period from the early 1990s to 2016, Windows desktops became dominant. From late 2016 the mobile era took over, and desktop market share was down to 45% in January 2017. Different categories of use a wide variety of operating systems. Windows gained majority share in the 1990s, on desktops. On smartphones, Android is dominant by any metric, its base is 1.8 billion. Android is the highest ranked OS in most countries of the world, leading to it eventually, in late 2016, Android alone explains that to a large degree, smartphones alone have majority use, where Android is dominant. Android has over half the share across platforms in the two biggest continents, Africa and Asia. For brief periods, countries on other continents, such as the United States, have lost desktops-majority share, since 2013, devices running Android have been selling more than Windows, iOS and macOS devices combined. That made Android the most popular operating system runs on smartphones. Most desktop and laptop computers use Microsoft Windows, while virtually all supercomputers use Linux, in the servers category, there is more diversity, with Linux and Windows Server most popular, and many fewer mainframes. Data about operating system share is difficult to obtain, since in most categories there are few primary sources or agreed methodologies for its collection. According to Gartner, the following is the device shipments by operating system. Note that shipments do not mean sales to consumers, so the use of the numbers as a popularity guide could be misleading. For 2015, Gartner reports for the year, worldwide PC shipments declined for the fourth consecutive year, Gartner includes Macs in PC sales numbers, and they individually had a slight increase in sales in 2015. On 28 May 2015, Google announced that there are 1.4 billion Android users and 1 billion Google play users, active in May 2015. On 27 January 2016, Paul Thurrott summarized the operating system market, granted, some of those Apple devices were probably sold into the market place years ago
38.
Classic Mac OS
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This is a list of macOS components, features that are included in the current Mac operating system. Latest version 2.7 Automator is a developed by Apple Inc. Automator enables the repetition of tasks across a variety of programs, including Finder, Safari, Calendar, Contacts. It can also work with third-party applications such as Microsoft Office, the icon features a robot holding a pipe, a reference to pipelines, a computer science term for connected data workflows. Automator was first released with Mac OS X Tiger, Automator provides a graphical user interface for automating tasks without knowledge of programming or scripting languages. Tasks can be recorded as they are performed by the user or can be selected from a list, the output of the previous action can become the input to the next action. Automator comes with a library of Actions that act as individual steps in a Workflow document, a Workflow document is used to carry out repetitive tasks. Workflows can be saved and reused, unix command line scripts and AppleScripts can also be invoked as Actions. The actions are linked together in a Workflow, the Workflow can be saved as an application, Workflow file or a contextual menu item. Options can be set when the Workflow is created or when the Workflow is run, a workflow file created in Automator is saved in /Users//Library/Services. Latest version 10.8 Calculator is a calculator application made by Apple Inc. It has three modes, basic, scientific, and programmer, Basic includes a number pad, buttons for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, as well as memory keys. Scientific mode supports exponents and trigonometric functions, and programmer mode gives the user access to more options related to computer programming, Apple currently ships a different application called Grapher. Calculator has Reverse Polish notation support, and can speak the buttons pressed. The Calculator appeared first as an accessory in first version of Macintosh System for the 1984 Macintosh 128k. Its design was maintained with the basic math operations until the final release of classic Mac OS in 2002. A Dashboard Calculator widget is included in all versions of macOS from Mac OS X Tiger onwards and it only has the basic mode of its desktop counterpart. Since the release of OS X Yosemite, there is also a simple calculator widget available in the notifications area, since the release of Mac OS X Leopard, simple arithmetic functions can be calculated from Spotlight feature
39.
Apple Inc.
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Apple is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. Apples consumer software includes the macOS and iOS operating systems, the media player, the Safari web browser. Its online services include the iTunes Store, the iOS App Store and Mac App Store, Apple Music, Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in April 1976 to develop and sell personal computers. It was incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. in January 1977, Apple joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average in March 2015. In November 2014, Apple became the first U. S. company to be valued at over US$700 billion in addition to being the largest publicly traded corporation in the world by market capitalization. The company employs 115,000 full-time employees as of July 2015 and it operates the online Apple Store and iTunes Store, the latter of which is the worlds largest music retailer. Consumers use more than one billion Apple products worldwide as of March 2016, Apples worldwide annual revenue totaled $233 billion for the fiscal year ending in September 2015. This revenue accounts for approximately 1. 25% of the total United States GDP.1 billion, the corporation receives significant criticism regarding the labor practices of its contractors and its environmental and business practices, including the origins of source materials. Apple was founded on April 1,1976, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, the Apple I kits were computers single-handedly designed and hand-built by Wozniak and first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard, which was less than what is now considered a personal computer. The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 and was market-priced at $666.66, Apple was incorporated January 3,1977, without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800. Multimillionaire Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of $250,000 during the incorporation of Apple, during the first five years of operations revenues grew exponentially, doubling about every four months. Between September 1977 and September 1980 yearly sales grew from $775,000 to $118m, the Apple II, also invented by Wozniak, was introduced on April 16,1977, at the first West Coast Computer Faire. It differed from its rivals, the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, because of its character cell-based color graphics. While early Apple II models used ordinary cassette tapes as storage devices, they were superseded by the introduction of a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive and interface called the Disk II. The Apple II was chosen to be the platform for the first killer app of the business world, VisiCalc. VisiCalc created a market for the Apple II and gave home users an additional reason to buy an Apple II. Before VisiCalc, Apple had been a distant third place competitor to Commodore, by the end of the 1970s, Apple had a staff of computer designers and a production line
40.
Apple Lisa
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Apple Lisa was a desktop computer developed by Apple, released on January 19,1983. It was one of the first personal computers to offer a user interface in a machine aimed at individual business users. Development of the Lisa began in 1978, and it underwent many changes during the development period before shipping at the high price of US$9,995 with a 5 MB hard drive. The high price, relatively low performance and unreliable Twiggy floppy disks led to poor sales, in 1982, after Steve Jobs was forced out of the Lisa project, he joined the Macintosh project, at that time developing a much more limited machine with a task-switching interface. Jobs redirected the Macintosh team to build a cheaper and better Lisa, releasing it in January 1984, newer versions of the Lisa were introduced that addressed its faults and lowered its price considerably, but it never really picked up sales compared to the much less expensive Mac. The final revision of the Lisa, the Lisa 2/10, was modified, generally considered a failure, the Lisa nevertheless introduced a number of advanced features that would not re-appear on the Macintosh for a number of years. Among these was a system which featured protected memory and preemptive multitasking. The hardware itself was much more advanced than the Macintosh, with a hard drive and support for up to 2 megabytes of RAM, expansion slots. The main exception being that while the Macintosh also used the 68000 processor, the complexity of the Lisa operating system and its associated programs overtaxed the slower processor enough that users perceived it to be sluggish, particularly when scrolling in documents. While the documentation shipped with the original Lisa only ever referred to it as The Lisa, officially, decades later, Jobs would tell his biographer Walter Isaacson, Obviously it was named for my daughter. The project began in 1978 as an effort to create a modern version of the then-conventional design epitomized by the Apple II. Initial team leader Ken Rothmuller was soon replaced by John Couch, trip Hawkins, who was then on the marketing team for the nascent Lisa project, and Jef Raskin contributed to the change in design. Several years prior to this, research had been going on at Xeroxs Palo Alto Research Center to create a new way to organize everything on the screen, Steve Jobs visited Xerox PARC in 1979. He was excited by the revolutionary mouse-driven GUI of the Xerox Alto and was keen to use these ideas back at Apple, a great deal of work was put into making the graphical interface into a mainstream commercial product by the Lisa team. By May 1982 InfoWorld reported that Apples yet-to-be-announced Lisa 68000 network work station is widely rumored to have a mouse. The Lisa was a project at the company, which reportedly spent more than $50 million on its development. More than 90 people participated on the design, plus more on the sales, bruce Daniels was in charge of applications development, and Larry Tesler was in charge of system software. After a six-month period in which the interface was designed, the hardware, operating system
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