Systems  Pen Drives Operating Systems Free Software? Articles Contact  Operating Systems: An operating system, abbreviated "OS", is software that provides the user with an interface as well as hardware support and support to run and use applications. Operating systems also accept input and display output by communicating with hardware and interacting with any respective applications or system software that might be using that hardware. GNU, UNIX, BSD, Haiku, Windows (XP, Vista, 7) and Mac OS, are all examples of operating systems. Linux on the other hand, is a kernel. GNU using Linux as its kernel makes a functioning operating system called GNU+Linux, see below for more information. GNU+Linux GNU+Linux is the name given to any Unix-like computer operating system that uses software from the GNU Project and the Linux kernel. GNU+Linux is one of the most prominent examples of Free Software and Open Source software collaboration; except for some controversial proprietary licensed binary blobs in the Linux kernel (which we do not install if the hardware doesn't require it). A GNU+Linux system's utilities and libraries usually come from the GNU operating system, announced in 1983 by Richard Stallman. And the name Linux comes from the Linux kernel, created by Linus Torvalds. All underlying source code can be freely used, modified, and distributed by anyone, when licensed under the GNU General Public License. Thousands of pieces of software for virtually every operating system are licensed under the GNU General Public License. Typically GNU+Linux is packaged in a format known as a GNU+Linux distribution for desktop and server use. GNU+Linux distributions include GNU (the main supporting Userland in the form of system tools and libraries from the GNU Project), the Linux kernel, and other supporting software required to run a complete system, such as utilities and libraries, the X Window System, the GNOME and KDE desktop environments, and the Apache HTTP Server. Commonly-used applications with desktop GNU+Linux systems include the Mozilla Firefox web-browser and the OpenOffice.org office application suite. Sometimes the GNU and Linux combination is incorrectly called simply "Linux", this is incorrect because Linux is the kernel, and GNU is the operating system. GNU has its own software, and kernel. There exists GNU without Linux, these combinations are GNU/kFreeBSD (GNU using the FreeBSD kernel), and GNU/Hurd (GNU using GNU Hurd and a micro-kernel such as GNU Mach.) OpenSolaris OpenSolaris is a Free Software operating system based on Solaris created by Sun Microsystems, now a part of Oracle Corporation. It is also the name of the project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around it. OpenSolaris is derived from the Unix System V Release 4 codebase, with significant modifications made by Sun since it bought the rights to that code in 1994. It is the only Free Software System V derivative available. Free Software components are snapshots of the latest Solaris release under development. Sun has announced that future versions of its commercial Solaris operating system will be based on technology from the OpenSolaris project. Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD, sometimes called Berkeley Unix) is the UNIX operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995. Historically, BSD has been considered a branch of UNIX — "BSD UNIX", because it shared the initial codebase and design with the original AT&T UNIX operating system. In the 1980s, BSD was widely adopted by vendors of workstation- class systems in the form of proprietary UNIX variants such as DEC ULTRIX and Sun Microsystems SunOS. This can be attributed to the ease with which it could be licensed, and the familiarity it found among the founders of many technology companies of this era. Though these commercial BSD derivatives were largely superseded by the UNIX System V Release 4 and OSF/1 systems in the 1990s (both of which incorporated BSD code), later BSD releases provided a basis for several Free Software development projects that continue to this day. Today, the term of "BSD" is often non-specifically used to refer to any of these BSD descendants, e.g., FreeBSD, NetBSD or OpenBSD, which together form a branch of the family of Unix-like operating systems. Haiku Haiku is a Free Software operating system compatible with BeOS. Its development began in 2001, and the operating system became self-hosting in 2008, with the first official alpha version released in September 2009. Haiku targets personal computing. Inspired by the Be Operating System, Haiku aims to become a fast, efficient, simple to use, easy to learn and yet very powerful system for computer users of all levels. Haiku is supported by Haiku, Inc., a non-profit organization based in Rochester, New York, that was founded in 2003 to support the project. Note: Haiku is only an alpha version operating system, this means that it's at its first stage of development. In example, the authors of Haiku might have 1 alpha version or 5, in the latter case the 2nd alpha release would only be a 2/5 completed version 1 of the operating system. This is why we do not recommend it unless you know what you're doing. InaTux.com in its entirety is protected by US Copyright laws. © 2010 InaTux. Restricted use permitted as stated under the InaTux Legal Policy. 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