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THE EVOLUTION OF OPERATING SYSTEMS
Nechiele T Whittington
Kaplan College
IT320-05 Operating Systems Concepts
Instructor: Denver Martin
January 17, 2010
OS EVOLUTION - 2 Everything has to start from somewhere. The concept of the computer operating
system evolved from several versions of straight forward programming and assembly
languages to uniprogramming and multiprogramming batch systems, to time-sharing
applications to finally become what we recognize today as an operating system
application.
The concept of the operating system started in the late 1940’s with a notable blip
in 1954 with the introduction of the IBM 701 open shop application, where users had to
manually operate the computer processors and were allotted a minimum amount of time
to initiate and complete their computations. (Hansen, “Evolution of Operating Systems”
2000). According to Stallings (Stallings, “Operating Systems, Internals and Design
Principals” 2009), “…computers were run from a console consisting of display lights,
toggle switches, some form of input device and a printer.” While the computer was being
used, any errors would be noted by system lights and a printer readout. Of course, this
would halt the entire system which would impact the current user and those immediately
scheduled to use the system afterwards since all processing was done in the order
received. As you can imagine, this ‘serial processing’ operation was less than stellar. It
was considered extremely inefficient because of the excessive resources being wasted.
As noted by Brinch Hanson, “The cost of the wasted computer time was $146,000 per
month in 1954 dollars!” (Hanson, 2000, “Evolution”) This was a result of the length of
time consumed by users just trying to set up their calculations for processing!
The next evolutionary step towards the creation of operating systems was the
implementation of ‘batch processing’. It was a widely agreed upon idea that computer
resources were wasted with the way things were done up until this point. Then someone
OS EVOLUTION - 3 got the idea to take the users out of the equation and let the computer set up their
workloads on their own. IBM introduced a more streamlined system under the IBM 704
system. This system used operators that processed punch card information into satellite
computer feeds that were then translated onto magnetic tapes. Those tapes were then
“mounted on a tape station connected to a main computer.”(Hanson, 2000 “Evolution”)
This was an improvement over the serial processing set-up because it cut out a lot of user
error, but the application was still time consuming. This wasn’t a big leap in terms of
execution as programs were still processed on a first-come, first-served basis.
1959 introduced the next step towards operating systems: the multi-programmed
batch systems. As you can imagine, this process allowed multiple programs to be run at
one time under the premise of multi-tasking—when one program would hit an area where
it would need to wait for the I/O process, another program would be started in the interim
which would improve resource utilization. Unfortunately, this still didn’t solve the
problem of memory management because while the choice of programs allowed to run
was ultimately left up to the processor, the necessary algorithms were still resource hogs.
Thus the ideas of ‘time sharing’ and ‘spooling’ were introduced into the programming
world. These ideas and applications would lay the foundations for the creation and
implementation of what we understand as operating system programs today.
There were many advances from 1959 to 1969 that would shape the programming
world—advances that would make programmers question the veracity and more
importantly, the efficiency of the use of assembly language and direct processor/memory
interface for computer programming. What was being used and created just wasn’t
efficient enough. People wanted more from the computer. By 1969, they got it.
OS EVOLUTION - 4 In 1969, UNICS was introduced into the computer world. A C based
programming language was created and used to jumpstart the computing world. It was
because of UNICS that a programmer named Ken Thompson over at Bell Labs ultimately
created the first version of UNIX which was based off of the C programming language.
From that point on, the world of computers would never be the same
(FreeDictionary.com UNIX). UNIX was the launch pad for operating systems then, and
as you can imagine, is still the basis of the standard operating systems in use today.
At first, while UNIX was the operating system to have, there were compatibility
issues that overshadowed the overall product usefulness. The compatibility issues
stemmed from the fact that vendors were creating their own versions of UNIX for
competition. This was great in that it offered users the chance to try other UNIX flavors,
but because there was really no standardization at the time, there really wasn’t a guideline
outside of what vendors could imagine and implement to suit their particular needs. The
Open Group website has a great sentence/quote that sums up the first iterations of UNIX:
“In the early 1980's, the market for UNIX systems had grown enough to be noticed by
industry analysts and researchers. Now the question was no longer "What is a UNIX
system?" but "Is a UNIX system suitable for business and commerce?"” (The Open
Group: UNIX Timeline: http://www.unix.org/what_is_unix/history_timeline.html )
Between 1969 and 1979, there were multitudes of operating systems; some were
received well and some never made it out of the development arena. Operating systems
like Atlas (1960’s), the Burroughs 5000 (1961), Exec II (approximately 1966), and The
Edgon System (approximately 1966) were some of the more ‘notable’ ones. UNIX
OS EVOLUTION - 5 would experience no less than ten different versions during this time. Then, something
interesting happened…
In 1991, Linus Torvalds answered the call with the creation and subsequent 1992
introduction of the first flavor of Linux. His operating system offered a stable kernel—
something UNIX hadn’t achieved yet. Torvalds became something of a phenomena in
the computer world because of one simple fact: Linux (unlike its predecessors)
incorporated the standards, suggestions, and development of hundreds of other
programmers and developers. It was (and is) a true open-source operating system that
focused on the needs of its users. Because of the open-source nature of Linux,
compatibility issues were negated almost as quickly as they occurred and it wasn’t
bogged down in the political/bureaucratic red tape that UNIX couldn’t avoid. Some
would say that Linux helped heal the “UNIX wars” rift.
To date, there have been several Linux flavors released, some of the most popular
being Red Hat, SuSE, and (most recent) Ubuntu. The Novell infrastructure features both
Linux and Windows based applications and is often used in the backbone infrastructure
of businesses worldwide. Entities like The Library of Congress are using Linux
applications to help digitize and retain historic documents. The FBI uses Linux
applications to link federal, state and local government systems together to hopefully
improve communications and facilitate faster emergency response times. Even
international governments are using Linux based applications for their research, data
migration and distribution efforts. (Linux in Government:
http://www.linux.org/info/linux_govt.html)
OS EVOLUTION - 6 I’ve recently become a personal Linux fan myself. While other operating systems
may offer universally recognized branding, I’ve come to see Linux as the more business
compatible operating system platform available. I love the fact that Linux is (relatively)
easily customizable and can be adapted to fit my business needs. The open-source aspect
helps quite a bit in that vein; problems that I may encounter have probably been
encountered, tackled and resolved before and that information is freely available should I
ever need it.
We’ve come a long way with computers. As a personal and business user and
potential developer, I just can’t wait to see what we do next with them…
OS EVOLUTION - 7 -
REFERENCES:
Stallings, William (2009): “Operating Systems Internals and Design Principles” Sixth
Edition, Pearson/Prentice Hall, Saddle River, NJ
Hansen, Brinch (2000): The Evolution of Operating Systems- http://brinchhansen.net/papers/2001b.pdf
Free Dictionary.com explanation of UNIX origins:
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Unics
The Open Group.com-UNIX History:
http://www.unix.org/what_is_unix/history_timeline.html
Linux Online-Linux Timeline: http://www.linux.org/info/linux_timeline.html