Linux Distribution

Contents

1. Introduction

• About the essay ...page 2

• What is an operating system interface?

• The meaning of an interface in an operating system

• The visual interface

• The underlying interface

• What are system calls?

• Description of a system call

• Examples

• Differences and similarities between Windows XP and Linux with respect to system calls and interfaces

• Differences and similarities in regard to system calls

• Differences and similarities in regard to interfaces

2. Detailed comparison between both systems

• Process handling

• What is process handling?

• Ways to handle processes

• Memory management

• About memory

• Memory management explained

• Input/Output

• About inputs and outputs

• File management

• The file systems

• Security

• The Windows and Linux security myth

3. Appenedix

• References

Introduction

About the essay

The basis of this essay is to introduce and compare 2 of the most popular OSs(Operating System/s) known to the general public, these operating systems are Windows XP and Linux.

Windows XP is a Windows 2000 spin-off which in turn is based on the Windows NT kernel, each new update of Windows brings many improvements and unfortunately new headaches as well. Linux has many different distributions which differ in many ways except for the core parts like the kernel.

Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#Distributions> states that the only difference between the Linux distributions or “distros” (very popular way to refer to the word “distributions” in regards to Linux) is the software packages and processes which are usually aimed at specific things...