Android

A mobile operating system, it was developed by Android Inc that was

founded in Palo Alto, California, in October 2003 by Andy Rubin, Rich
Miner, Nick Sears, and Chris White. Two years on (in 2005), Android
Inc was acquired by Google. Written mainly in Java (UI), C (core) and
C++, Android OS is based on a modified version of the Linux kernel
and other open source software, and has been created mainly for
touchscreen mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. It is
currently the best-selling OS worldwide on smartphones. Android
features include messaging; auto-correction and dictionary; web
browser; voice-based features such as voice actions for calling,
texting, navigation; multitasking; screen capture and TV recording. It
also supports multiple languages, bluetooth, tethering and various
audio/ video/ still media formats and external storage.   

Android has seen a number of updates to its base operating system

since the initial release. Each version has had a code name and
these are confectionery-themed and in alphabetical order; the first
one was 2009’s Android 1.5 Cupcake and the latest version of
Android is Android 11, that was released in September 2020.  

Amazon Fire OS
Amazon Fire OS is an Android-based mobile operating system
produced by Amazon for its Fire Phone and Kindle Fire range of
tablets, Echo, Echo Dot, and other content delivery devices such as
Fire TV. It is forked from Android, which means that it is in fact a
separate piece of software produced as a result of developers taking
a copy of the source code from Android’s software package and
independently building on it. This explains why Fire OS is also written
mainly in C (core), C++ and Java (UI). Fire OS focuses on content
consumption, with a customized user interface and strong ties to
content available from Amazon’s own storefronts and services. In
other words, Fire OS uses a customized user interface designed to
prominently promote content available through Amazon services,
such as Amazon Appstore, Amazon Video, Amazon MP3 & Audible,
and Kindle Store. 

CentOS
An open source free software that offers robust platform
management, CentOS is ideal for developers looking for an operating
system to simply help them carry out their coding tasks. It provides a
lot of resources for coders looking to build, test and release their
codes. Moreover, it offers seamless interoperability by solving
hundreds of hardware and software problems and comes equipped
with advanced security features, like process and user rights
management, in turn allowing developers to secure mission-critical
data. It also scores high on the advanced networking and
compatibility fronts. This is what makes CentOS ideal for coders than
for personal and home use.

Chrome OS
Another Linux kernel-based operating system, Chrome OS has been
designed by Google. Derived from the free software Chromium OS, it
uses the Google Chrome web browser as its main user interface. Due
to this, Chrome OS mainly supports web applications.  
Among its features, the OS - written in the programming languages C
and C++  - has an integrated media player and file manager; plus it
supports Chrome Apps and remote access to the desktop. Android
applications became available on Chrome OS in 2014.  

It is important to note here that the Chrome OS project was

announced by Google back in 2009 and the first Chrome OS laptop,
known as a Chromebook, hit the market in May 2011. Chrome OS is
only available pre-installed on hardware from Google’s manufacturing
partners, although there are unofficial methods using which one can
install it on other devices. 

A significant development has been the provision of support to Linux

apps; this was announced in 2018. Before this, Linux applications
would run on Chrome OS with the use of Crouton, a third-party set of
scripts that allows access to a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu. The
biggest benefit of Chrome OS’s official Linux application support is
that it can now run without enabling developer mode, while retaining
many of the security features of Chrome OS.

Debian
A Linux kernel-based free open-source OS; Debian is a pre-compiled
software that has over 59000 packages. Easy to install, it provides
developers a user-friendly interface. Its advantages include speed - it
is indeed faster and lighter than many other OSes, regardless of the
processor speed - and built in security firewalls to protect valuable
data. It is also easy on the pocket. 
Free BSD
Built in the University of California by a large community, Free BSD is
a free UNIX based open-source software that is compatible with many
platforms and boasts features such as speed and stability. It also
offers good security features, efficient memory management and
ability to deal with heavy loads, making it a good choice for advanced
networking and internet and intranet services. Easy to install using
CD-ROM, DVD or directly over the network using FTP and NPS, Free
BSD makes for a robust operating system that can cater easily to
higher-end Intel-based appliances.

 iOS
iOS - earlier called iPhone OS - is a mobile operating system built
and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. The
company’s mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod
Touch, run on this operating system, making it the second most
popular mobile operating system globally after Android. Written in C,
C++, Objective-C and Swift programming languages, the latest
version of iOS is iOS 14.2.1, which was released on November 19,
2020.  Apple typically offers major updates to the iOS operating
system every year via iTunes and over the air too for versions iOS 5
and the ones after it. iOS was launched along with the iPhone at the
Macworld Conference & Expo in January 2007 and released in June
the same year. It is interesting to note that at the time of the iPhone’s
release, the operating system was renamed iPhone OS instead of OS
X. The iOS App Store opened on July 10, 2008 and it offered around
500 applications. As of March 2018, this number has grown to more
than two million apps. The key features of iOS include a home screen
rendered by app SpringBoard, Helvetica Neue as the system font,
multitasking, notification center, accessibility features to help users
with vision and hearing disabilities, folders option, application
switching and task completion. Also worth a mention are Siri, the
intelligent personal assistant integrated into iOS; and Game Center,
the online multiplayer social gaming network released by Apple.
Developers need the iOS SDK (Software Development Kit) to make
mobile apps on iOS.

Linux Fedora
Fedora is a Linux distribution developed by the community-supported
Fedora Project and sponsored by the US software company Red Hat.
It comprises software distributed under various free and open-source
licenses. Its key features include pre-installed software such as
LibreOffice and Firefox and the Red Hat Package Manager package
management system. Fedora has a rather short life cycle, where each
version is typically supported for 13 months, where a particular
version is supported until 1 month after the next version is released
and with around 6 months between most versions.   The good thing is
that Fedora users didn’t reinstall the new version; they can simply
upgrade from version to version. The latest release, 33, was out in
October 2020. The default desktop environment in Fedora is GNOME
and the default user interface is the GNOME Shell. It is known for
focusing on innovation, integrating new technologies early on and
working closely with upstream Linux communities. After the release of
Fedora 21, three different editions are available: Workstation that
focuses on the personal computer, Server for servers and Atomic that
works on cloud computing. As of February 2016, Fedora is said to
have around 1.2 million users. 

macOS
macOS is a series of graphical operating systems developed and
marketed by Apple Inc. It is the primary OS for Apple’s Mac family of
computers. But interestingly, macOS is the second major series of
Macintosh operating systems. The first - colloquially called the
classic Mac OS was introduced in 1984, and its final version was Mac
OS 9, that was released in 1999. The first desktop version, Mac OS X
10.0, was released in March 2001, with its first update, 10.1, being
launched later that year.  The latest version is macOS Big Sur, which
was released in November 2020. The update has a system-wide dark
mode and many new apps lifted from iOS, such as Apple News.

macOS is the second most widely used desktop OS - after Microsoft

Windows - in the market of desktop, laptop and home computers, and
by web usage.  

Based on technologies developed between 1985 and 1997 at NeXT,

also founded by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, macOS is written in C,
C++, Objective-C and Swift. One of the key features of macOS is the
addition of Aqua, a graphical user interface with water-like elements,
in the first major release of Mac OS X. Every window element, text,
graphic, or widget has been drawn on-screen using spatial anti-
aliasing technology. There’s also ColorSync, a technology introduced
several years ago, which has been improved and built into the core
drawing engine, to offer printing and multimedia professionals color
matching options. 

The appearance and design of macOS has undergone several

changes, particularly the menu bar and the appearance of windows.
Apple rolled out its Mac models with high-resolution Retina displays
in 2012; macOS and its APIs have extensive support for resolution-
independent development on supporting high-resolution displays.

Raspberry Pi OS (formerly Raspbian) 

A computer operating system created specially for the Raspberry Pi
series of small single-board computers, this OS, earlier called
Raspbian, is based on Debian, the Unix-like operating system
consisting entirely of free software. There are several versions,
including Stretch, Jessie and Buster. 

Earlier versions were 32bit and based on Raspbian core, taking the
name Raspbian, but with recent 64bit versions not using the
Raspbian core, the name has been changed to Raspberry Pi OS for
both 64bit and 32bit versions. However, as of August 1, 2020, the 64-
bit version is a beta and is not ideal for general use.

Created by Mike Thompson and Peter Green as an independent

project in the year 2012, this OS has been the primary operating
system for Raspberry Pi since the year 2015. It comes with over
35,000 packages, these are pre-compiled software available in a
format that allows easy installation on your Raspberry Pi. Raspbian
may be free software, but its developers continue to work towards
improving the stability and performance of as many Debian packages
as possible. Its latest release, Buster, was out in August 2020.

Solaris
A UNIX based operating system, Solaris was originally developed by
Sun Microsystems in the mid-’90s and is known as Oracle Solaris
since 2010 when Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems. Its major
offerings include scalability, interoperability, data management and
security, all of which are crucial for businesses that need high-end
operating software. In addition to the above, it is also known for its
web, database and Java-based services and its unlimited capacity for
helping in managing file system and databases is a big plus as well.

Ubuntu
An open-source Linux distribution based on Debian’s architecture and
infrastructure, Ubuntu is an OS that has been officially released in
three editions: Desktop, Server and Core (for internet of things,
devices and robots). All the editions can run on the computer alone,
or e.g. in Windows. Ubuntu is in demand mainly for cloud computing,
with support for OpenStack. It functions under the GNU General
Public License (GPL) and all of the application software installed by
default is free software. 

It is developed by the computer software company Canonical, which

also offers security updates and support for each Ubuntu release and
earns revenue from the sale of premium Ubuntu services. This OS is
released every six months, with long-term support (LTS) releases
every two years. The latest release is 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla), which
will be supported for 9 months, with 20.04 (Focal Fossa) as the most
recent long-term support release. Ubuntu has a Linux server, desktop
and discontinued phone and tablet operating system versions.

By default, Ubuntu comes with features such as LibreOffice, Firefox,

Thunderbird, Transmission, and lightweight games like Sudoku and
chess; the default file manager is GNOME Files. The OS is written in
programming languages Python, Java, C, C++ and C#. The OS was
first released in the year 2004; in 2016, Microsoft declared that the
Ubuntu userland would be supported on top of the Windows 10 kernel
and that this would be done by implementing the Linux system calls
as a subsystem. Ubuntu is said to be the most popular Linux
distribution for running web servers; moreover, it offers Ubuntu Cloud
Images, these are pre-installed disk images that have been
customized by Ubuntu engineering to run on cloud-platforms such as
Amazon EC2, OpenStack and Microsoft Azure. But since Ubuntu is
distributed freely and there is no registration process involved, it is
tough to track Ubuntu usage. In 2015, developer Canonical stated
that Ubuntu had over 40 million desktop users.

Windows
Microsoft Windows is a group of many graphical operating system
families, all of which are developed, marketed and sold by Microsoft.
Each family caters to a particular sector of the computing industry.
Microsoft first launched an operating environment called Windows in
November 1985; it was a graphical operating system shell for MS-
DOS introduced to meet the increasing interest in graphical user
interfaces (GUIs). Microsoft Windows went on to dominate the world’s
personal computer (PC) market with over 90% market share,
overtaking Mac OS. In the PC segment, Windows continues to be the
most popular operating system. That said, in 2014, Microsoft
admitted losing out to Android in the overall operating system market
primarily due to the massive increase in sales of Android
smartphones. The most recent version of Windows for PCs, tablets,
smartphones and embedded devices is Windows 10. A special
version of Windows runs on the Xbox One video game console.
Windows is mainly written in the low-level Assembly programming
language and C++. Its main features include the Control Panel,
Cortana virtual assistant, Device Manager, Disk Cleanup, Event
Viewer,  File Explorer, Internet browser, Microsoft Paint, Notepad,
Notification area, Power User Tasks Menu, Taskbar, Task Manager
and Windows search box. A wide range of devices run Windows OS,
be it laptops, desktops, 2-in-1s, tablets and Windows phones.