Operating System

What is an operating system?

It ...

• is a piece of software
• manages computer hardware and software resources
• provides basic user interface, common programs
• acts as an intermediary between users and the computer hardware

Popular Operating Systems

Microsoft's Windows

• Windows 1.0 - 1985 November 20
• Windows 2.0 - 1987 December 9
• Windows 2.1 - 1988 May 27
• Windows 3.1 - 1993 November 8
• Windows 95 - 1995 August 24
• Windows 98 - 1998 May 15
• Windows ME - 2000 June 19
• Windows XP - 2001 August 24
• Windows Vista - 2006 January 30
• Windows 7 - 2009 July 22
• Windows 8 - 2012 August 1
• Windows 10 - 2015 July 15
• Windows 11 - 2021 October 5

Apple's macOS

Code names based on Animals

• Mac OS X "Kodiak" - September 13, 2000
• Mac OS X 10.0 "Cheetah" - March 24, 2001
• Mac OS X 10.1 "Puma" - September 25, 2001
• Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar" - August 24, 2002
• Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther" - October 24, 2003
• Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" - April 29, 2005
• Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" - October 26, 2007
• Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" - August 28, 2009
• Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion" - July 20, 2011
• Mac OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion" - July 25, 2012

Code names based on Locations

• Mac OS X 10.9 "Mavericks" - October 22, 2013
• Mac OS X 10.10 "Yosemite" - October 16, 2014
• Mac OS X 10.11 "El Capitan" - September 30, 2015
• macOS 10.12 "Sierra" - September 20, 2016
• macOS 10.13 "High Sierra" - September 25, 2017
• macOS 10.14 "Mojave" - September 24, 2018
• macOS 10.15 "Catalina" - October 7, 2019
• macOS 11 (11.0) "Big Sur" - November 12, 2020
• macOS 12 (12.0) "Monterey" - October 25, 2021
• macOS 13 (13.0) "Ventura" - October 24, 2022
• macOS 14 (14.0) "Sonoma" - September 26, 2023

Linux distributions

• We loosely call Linux as an operating system. But it is not an operating system. Linux is a kernel.
• Linux distributions: Operating systems that use the Linux kernel
• In short we call Linux distributions as Linux distros