Operating systems are an important part of today’s IT systems. During history, different types of operating systems are developed with different methodologies, licenses, prices, and features. Even most of us do not know there are hundreds of operating systems where only a dozen of them continued and most of them vanished.
What Is Operating System?
Operating system is a software of component which runs on the given hardware and manage resource by providing these resources to the different applications and software. Operating systems mainly
Operating System Types According License
Operating systems are complex software where there are a lot of work to create a useable operating system. So some communities creates open source free operating systems but some companies also creates proparirity operating systems to sell and make profit. These differencies generally creates different license types where licences are used to restrict and shape the usage of the given operating systems.
GPL and related open and free licences generally used with open source and free operating systems like Linux, BSD, Ubuntu, CentOS etc. to create a free ecosystem.
EULA and similar operating system licences are used for commercial operating systems like Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows Server etc.
Operating System Types According Family
During development of the operating systems some of them copied old operating system code, phylosopy, software in order to prevent reinvention. This situaion created the operating systems families. Below we will list some of the popular operating systems families and their members.
Microsoft Windows Operating System Family is long standing operating systems family which is started with the IBM PC and MS-DOS operating system. During time it gained a lot of popularity and created better versions where Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019 are latest members.
Unix-Like operating systems family is a generic family where all operating systems inherited the Unix phylosophy and tools named as Unix-like. BSD, Linux, MacOS are Unix-like operating systems.
Linux Operating System Family is another popular operating systems family derived from Unix-like operating system family. Linux operating system family uses the Linux kernel and different popular distributions like Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, CentOS, RHEL, Kali, Mint are member of the Linux operating system family.
BSD or Berkeley Software Distribution Operating System Family is another geeky operating system family where derived from the Unix-like family. BSD operating system family mainly used for network, disk, datacenter security-related operations, and FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD are some members of it.
Operating System Types According Hardware
Operating systems generally runs on a hardware where the hardware can be different according to the situations and operating systems type. Mainly PC, Server, Laptop hardware is used to run operating systems but there are different types like below.
User and Desktop operating systems are designed to be used by end-users and IT professionals for personal or enterprise usage. They generally provide easy usage for daily tasks. Windows 10, Ubuntu, Debian, Mint are popular user and desktop operating systems.
Server Operating Systems are designed to provide enterprise services to to inside or outside users where reliability, performance, efficiency are important. Windows Server, FreeBSD, Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, SUSE, RHEL are popular server operating systems.
ARM is another processor architecture where embedded, mobile and entertainment devices using.
Embedded Operating Systems is mainly used in productions and hazardous environments. Raspbian, Windows Nano, Ubuntu ARM are some of the embedded operating system examples.
Smart Phones Oeprating Systems are another popular hardware type for operating systems where Android, iOS, and Windows Mobile are popular operating systems.
List Of Popular Operating Systems
- Windows
- Windows 95
- Windows 98
- Windows ME
- Windows XP
- Windows NT
- Windows 7
- Windows Vista
- Windows 8
- Windows 10
- Windows Server 2003
- Windows Server 2008
- Windows Server 2012
- Windows Server 2016
- Windows Server 2019
- Windows Mobile
- Windows CE
- Apple
- iOS
- MacOS
- Linux
- Ubuntu
- Debian
- Mint
- RHEL
- SUSE
- CentOS
- Fedora
- Manjaro
- Raspbian
- BSD
- Arch Linux
- Unix
- Solaris
- Google
- Chromium OS
- Android
- IBM
- AIX