Operating System Concepts, 8th Edition

Part Eight

Case Studies

 

 

We can now integrate the concepts described in this book by describing real operating systems. Two such systems are covered in great detail—Linux and Windows XP. We chose Linux for several reasons: It is popular, it is freely available, and it represents a full-featured UNIX system. This gives a student of operating systems an opportunity to read—and modify—real operating-system source code.

We also cover WindowsXP in great detail. This recent operating system from Microsoft is gaining popularity, not only in the stand-alone-machine market, but also in the workgroup-server market. We chose Windows XP because it provides an opportunity for us to study a modern operating system that has a design and implementation drastically different from those of UNIX.

In addition, we briefly discuss other highly influential operating systems. We have chosen the order of presentation to highlight the similarities and differences among the systems; it is not strictly chronological and does not reflect the relative importance of the systems.

Finally, we provide on-line coverage of three other systems. The FreeBSD system is another UNIX system. However, whereas Linux combines features from several UNIX systems, FreeBSD is based on the BSD model of UNIX. FreeBSD source code, like Linux source code, is freely available. The Mach operating system is a modern operating system that provides compatibility with BSD UNIX. Windows is another modern operating system from Microsoft ...