Operating Systems: Compare and Contrast

            
            
            
            
             The team project required members of the team to obtain information on Windows CE, Windows XP and Linux. The plan to find this information involved searching the World Wide Web for articles and websites containing the features of each of the operating systems over the course of 3 weeks. Each week we researched a different operating system. Towards the end of each week, we each posted our findings on the team newsgroup, compared our lists and if necessary, discussed of findings. Each week, one team member compiled all our individual lists of features into one complete list for each particular operating system. The forth week the team members will write this paper containing this plan, a selection of features that should be compared, an explanation of the features for each of the operating systems and an explanation of how the different operating compared with each other.
             Items to Compare and Contrast.
             All operating systems have numerous features unique to themselves. Although these features may be unique to a particular operating system they usually fall into categories are that common to all modern operating systems. Features found for these operating systems include those found categories such as communications and networks, application, performance and capability, security, display or graphic and other miscellaneous features. By breaking up these features up into these categories allows comparisons and contrasts to be easily seen.
             The network and communications features include how the operating system communications with other systems. This category includes use of network protocols such as TCP/IP. It also includes network services such as DNS, WINS, SNMP or SMTP. All these network components allow one computer to interact with another sometime independent of the operating system on the other computer.
             Application features can include applications that come with operating system upon initial installation, the operating system's graphic user interface, programming languages used to create new applications and the operating system's installation.