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Operating systems (OSes) provide a set of functions needed and used by most application-programs on a computer, and the necessary linkages for the control and synchronization of the computer's hardware. On the first computers, without an operating system, every program needed the full hardware specification to run correctly and perform standard tasks, and its own drivers for peripheral devices like printers and card-readers. The growing complexity of hardware and application-programs eventually made operating systems a necessity.

2009 - Windows 7

Windows 7 is, as of March 2010, the latest public release version of Microsoft Windows, a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, netbooks, tablet PCs, and media center PCs. Windows 7 was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and reached general retail availability on October 22, 2009,Windows Vista. Windows 7's server counterpart, Windows Server 2008 R2, was released at the same time.

2006 - Windows Vista

Windows Vista is a line of operating systems developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs. Prior to its announcement on July 22, 2005, Windows Vista was known by its codename "Longhorn." Development was completed on November 8, 2006; over the following three months it was released in stages to computer hardware and software manufacturers, business customers, and retail channels. On January 30, 2007, it was released worldwide, and was made available for purchase and download from Microsoft's website. The release of Windows Vista came more than five years after the introduction of its predecessor, Windows XP, the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft Windows desktop operating systems. It was succeeded by Windows 7 which was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and for the general public on October 22, 2009.

2003 - Fedora Core 1

Fedora is an RPM-based, general purpose operating system built on top of the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat. The Fedora Project's mission is to lead the advancement of free and open source software and content as a collaborative community.

2001 - Windows XP

Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, and media centers. It was released in 2001. The name "XP" is short for "eXPerience."

Windows XP is the successor to both Windows 2000 Professional and Windows Me, and is the first consumer-oriented operating system produced by Microsoft to be built on the Windows NT kernel and architecture. Windows XP was first released on October 25, 2001, and over 400 million copies were in use in January 2006, according to an estimate in that month by an IDC analyst. It was succeeded by Windows Vista, which was released to volume license customers on November 8, 2006, and worldwide to the general public on January 30, 2007. Direct OEM and retail sales of Windows XP ceased on June 30, 2008. Microsoft continued to sell XP through their System Builders (smaller OEMs who sell assembled computers) program until January 31, 2009. XP may continue to be available as these sources run through their inventory or by purchasing Windows Vista Ultimate or Business and then downgrading to Windows XP.

2001 - MAC OSX v10.0

Mac OS X version 10.0, code named “Cheetah”, is the first major release of Mac OS X, Apple’s desktop and server operating system. Mac OS X v10.0 was released on March 24, 2001 for a price of US$129. It superseded the Mac OS X Public Beta and preceded Mac OS X v10.1.

Mac OS X v10.0 was a radical departure from the previous “classic” Macintosh operating system and was Apple’s long awaited answer to the call for a next generation Macintosh operating system. It introduced a brand new code base completely separate from Mac OS 9's, as well as all previous Apple operating systems. Mac OS X introduced the new Darwin Unix-like core and a totally new system of memory management. It proved to be a rocky start to the Mac OS X line, plagued with missing features and performance issues, although it was praised for being a good start to an operating system still in its infancy, in terms of completeness and overall operating system stability.

2000 - Windows Me

Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me , is a graphical operating system released on September 14, 2000 by Microsoft. Support for Windows Me ended on July 11, 2006.

Windows Me was the successor to Windows 98 and, just like Windows 98, was targeted specifically at home PC users. It included Internet Explorer 5.5, Windows Media Player 7, and the new Windows Movie Maker software, which provided basic video editing and was designed to be easy for home users. Microsoft also updated the graphical user interface and the shell features and Windows Explorer in Windows Me with some of those first introduced in Windows 2000, which had been released as a business oriented operating system seven months earlier. Windows Me could be upgraded to Internet Explorer 6 SP1, but not to SP2 (SV1) or Internet Explorer 7, and Windows Media Player 9 Series. Microsoft .NET Framework up to and including version 2.0 is supported, however versions 2.0 SP1, 3.x, and greater are not. Office XP was the last version of Microsoft Office to be compatible with Windows 9x.

Windows Me is a continuation of the Windows 9x model, but with access to real mode MS-DOS restricted in order to speed up system boot time. This was one of the most publicized changes in Windows Me, because applications that needed real mode DOS to run, such as older disk utilities, did not run under Windows Me.

Compared with other releases of Windows, Windows Me had a short shelf-life of just over a year; it was soon replaced by the Windows NT-based Windows XP, which was launched on October 25, 2001.

1999 - Mac OS 9

Mac OS 9 is the final major release of Apple's "Classic" Mac OS. Introduced on October 23, 1999, Apple positioned it as "The Best Internet Operating System Ever," highlighting Sherlock 2's Internet search capabilities, integration with Apple's free online services known as iTools, and improved Open Transport networking.

While Mac OS 9 lacks the functionality of a modern operating system, such as protected memory and full pre-emptive multitasking, lasting improvements include the introduction of an automated Software Update engine and support for multiple users.

Apple discontinued development of Mac OS 9 in 2002, transitioning all future development to Mac OS X. Since that time, no updates have been released. The final updates to Mac OS 9 addressed compatibility issues with OS X while running in the Classic Environment and compatibility with Carbon applications.

Steve Jobs pitched OS 9 as the best "Internet OS ever". Users of Mac clones were left out as OS 9 was a "Made by Apple" affair

1998 - Windows 98

Windows 98 (codenamed Memphis) is a graphical operating system by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on 15 May 1998 and to retail on 25 June 1998. Windows 98 is the successor to Windows 95. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid 16-bit/32-bit monolithic product with an MS-DOS based boot loader. Windows 98 was succeeded by Windows Me on 14 September 2000. Microsoft support for Windows 98 ended on 11 July 2006.

1998 - Solaris 7

Solaris is a UNIX-based operating system introduced by Sun Microsystems in 1992 as the successor to SunOS.

Solaris is known for its scalability, especially on SPARC systems, and for originating many innovative features such as DTrace and ZFS. Solaris supports SPARC-based and x86-based workstations and servers from Sun and other vendors, with efforts underway to port to additional platforms.

Solaris is certified against the Single Unix Specification. Although it was historically developed as proprietary software, it is supported on systems manufactured by all major server vendors, and the majority of its codebase is now open source software via the OpenSolaris project.

1995 - Windows 95

Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products. During development it was referred to as Windows 4.0 or by the internal codename Chicago.

Windows 95 was intended to integrate Microsoft's formerly separate MS-DOS and Windows products. It features significant improvements over its predecessor, Windows 3.1, most visibly in the graphical user interface (GUI). There were also major changes made at lower levels of the operating system.

In the marketplace, Windows 95 was a major success, and within a year or two of its release had become the most successful operating system ever produced. It also had the effect of driving other major players in the DOS-compatible operating system out of business, something which would later be used in court against Microsoft. Some three years after introduction, Windows 95 was succeeded by Windows 98.

1993 - Windows NT 3.1 (First Windows NT kernel public release)

Windows NT 3.1 is the first release of Microsoft's Windows NT line of server and business desktop operating systems, and was released to manufacturing on 27 July 1993. The version number was chosen to match the one of Windows 3.1, the then-latest operating environment from Microsoft, on account of the similar visual appearance of the user interface. Two editions of NT 3.1 were made available, Windows NT 3.1 and Windows NT Advanced Server. It was succeeded by Windows NT 3.5 in September 1994.

It could run on Intel x86, DEC Alpha, and MIPS R4000 CPUs.

1991 - Linux

The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software.

The Linux kernel is released under the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2), plus proprietary licenses for some controversial binary blobs, and is developed by contributors worldwide. Day-to-day development takes place on the Linux kernel mailing list.

The Linux kernel was initially conceived and created by Finnish computer science student Linus Torvalds in 1991. Linux rapidly accumulated developers and users who adopted code from other free software projects for use with the new operating system. The Linux kernel has received contributions from thousands of programmers. Many Linux distributions have been released based upon the Linux kernel.

1984 - Mac OS (System 1.0)

On January 24, 1984, Apple Computer Inc. (now Apple Inc.) introduced the Macintosh personal computer, with the Macintosh 128K model, which came bundled with the Mac OS operating system, then known as the System Software.[1] The Macintosh is often credited with popularizing the graphical user interface. The Mac OS has been pre-installed on almost every Macintosh computer ever sold. The operating system is also sold separately at Apple retail stores, and online. The original Mac OS was partially based on the Lisa OS, previously released by Apple for the Lisa computer in 1983 and, as part of an agreement allowing Xerox to buy shares in Apple at a favorable rate, it also used concepts from the Xerox PARC Xerox Alto, which Steve Jobs and several other Macintosh team members had previewed.

1981 - MS-DOS

MS-DOS  (short for MicroSoft Disk Operating System) is an operating system for x86 based personal computers, which was purchased by Microsoft. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for personal computers during the 1980s[citation needed] and 1990s. It was preceded by M-DOS (also called MIDAS), designed and copyrighted by Microsoft in 1979. MSDOS was written for the Intel 8086 family of microprocessors, particularly the IBM PC and compatibles. It was gradually replaced on consumer desktop computers by operating systems offering a graphical user interface (GUI), in particular by various generations of the Microsoft Windows operating system. MS-DOS developed out of QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System), also known as 86-DOS.[1]

MS-DOS development originally started in 1981,[2] and was first released in 1982 as MS-DOS 1.0.[2] Several versions were released under different names for different hardware.[3] MS-DOS had eight major versions released before Microsoft stopped development in 2000. It was the key product in Microsoft's growth from a programming languages company to a diverse software development firm, providing the company with essential revenue and marketing resources. It was also the underlying basic operating system on which early versions of Windows ran as a GUI.

1978 - Apple DOS

Apple DOS refers to operating systems for the Apple II series of microcomputers from late 1978 through early 1983. Apple DOS had three major releases: DOS 3.1, DOS 3.2, and DOS 3.3; each one of these three releases was followed by a second, minor "bug-fix" release, but only in the case of Apple DOS 3.2 did that minor release receive its own version number, Apple DOS 3.2.1. The best-known and most-used version was Apple DOS 3.3 in the 1980 and 1983 releases. Prior to the release of Apple DOS 3.1, Apple users had to rely on audio cassette tapes for data storage and retrieval, but that method was notoriously slow, inconvenient and unreliable.

1966 - DOS/360 (IBM)

Disk Operating System/360, also DOS/360, or simply DOS, was an operating system for IBM mainframes. It was announced by IBM on the last day of 1964, and it was first delivered in June 1966.[1]

DOS/VS was further development, released in 1972, as the virtual memory mechanism became available on new System/370 series hardware.

IBM later released DOS/VSE, then VSE/ESA, and then z/VSE, which is the most current version since 2005. In its time DOS was the most widely used operating system in the world;[2] its successor z/VSE is still widely used as of 2006.[3]

Although their names are similar, there are no technical similarities between DOS/360 of the 1960s and the x86-DOS of the 1980s.

1957 - Atlas Supervisor (Manchester University) (Atlas computer project start)

The Atlas Supervisor was the program which managed the allocation of processing resources of Manchester University's Atlas Computer so that the machine was able to act on many tasks and user programs concurrently.

Its various functions included running the Atlas computer's virtual memory (Atlas Supervisor paper, section 3, Store Organisation) and is ‘considered by many to be the first recognisable modern operating system

1954 - MIT's operating system made for UNIVAC 1103

The UNIVAC 1103 or ERA 1103, a successor to the UNIVAC 1101, was a computer system designed by Engineering Research Associates and built by the Remington Rand corporation in October, 1953.

The system used electrostatic storage, consisting of 36 Williams tubes with a capacity of 1024 bits each, giving a total random access memory of 1024 words of 36 bits each. Each of the 36 Williams tubes was five inches in diameter. A magnetic drum memory provided 16,384 words. Both the electrostatic and drum memories were directly addressable: addresses 0 through 01777 (Octal) were in electrostatic memory and 040000 through 077777 (Octal) were on the drum.

Fixed-point numbers had a 1-bit sign and a 35-bit value, with negative values represented in one's complement format.

Instructions had a 6-bit operation code and two 15-bit operand addresses.

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