The Differences in Memory Management Between Windows and Linux

The differences in memory management between Windows and Linux

Jerry Delva,

University of Phoenix

POS/355

Due March 11, 2013

Michele Gamberutti

Microsoft Windows is a family of proprietary operating systems designed by Microsoft Corporation and primarily targeted to Intel architecture-based computers with an estimated 88.9% total use share on Web connected computers. Microsoft Windows originate in 1985 as an operating environment running on top of MS-DOS, which was the standard operating system shipped on most Intel architecture personal computers at the time. Server editions of Windows are widely used. In recent years, Microsoft has spent significant capital in an effort to promote the use of Windows as a server operating system. However, Windows' use on servers is not as common as on personal computers, as Windows competes against Linux and BSD for server market share (Wikimedia Foundation, 2013).

BSD is the Berkeley Software Distribution family, which includes FreeBSD, Net BSD, and Open BSD. These operating systems are most commonly found on web servers, although they can also function as a personal computer OS. The Internet owes much of its existence to BSD, as many of the protocols commonly used by computers to connect, send, and receive data over a network were widely implemented and refined in BSD (Wikimedia Foundation, 2013).

UNIX was originally written in assembly language. Ken Thompson wrote B, mainly based on BCPL, based on his experience in the MULTICS project. B was replaced by C, and UNIX, rewritten in C, developed into a large, complex family of interconnected operating systems that have been influential in every modern operating system (Wikimedia Foundation, 2013).

The kernel's primary function is to manage the computer's resources and allow other programs to run and use these resources. The Central Processing Unit (CPU) is the most central part of a computer system, responsible for running or executing programs. The kernel takes...