Modern Linux and Windows operating system architecture and integration

Windows Operating System:

As one of the mainstream modern operating systems, Windows Operating Systems is commonly used across the globe. The series of Windows Operating Systems are developed by Microsoft and have developed to become the leading operating systems that are used by many people in the globe. The history of this operating system can be traced back to 1981 when it was basically considered as a graphical user interface that provided easier and pleasant means of using MS-DOS. Similar to other mainstream operating systems, Windows is designed to incorporate all components of an operating system.

Development of Windows Operating System:

The history of this operating system begins with the development of MS-DOS or PC-DOS by Microsoft for the initial IBM personal computer. Upon its release in 1981, the first version of the operating system contained 4000 assembly lines for language source code and could function effectively in 8 Kb memories and Intel 8086 micro-processor. The initial operating system was primarily developed as a graphical user interface that enabled users to interact with MS-DOS easily (Tennyson, n.d.). The main idea behind the development of the operating system as a graphical user interface was to compete with Macintosh Company that produced easy-to-use operating systems.

Since the initial release, Windows Operating System has been progressively developed, particularly with the development of personal computers. This contributed to the release of subsequent versions of Windows Operating System including Windows 2.0, 3.1, 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Consequently, Windows Operating Systems have become mainstream programs because they allow a computer user to operating more than one program or process simultaneously in several windows on the monitor.

Components of Windows Operating Systems:

In addition to being user-friendly software, Windows operating system is the leading mainstream operating system because it's designed to incorporate components of the operating system. Some of the notable features or components of Windows Operating System include:

Processing Capabilities:

The operating system is developed on the basis of exploiting the processing capabilities of the current 32-bit microprocessors. Therefore, Windows competes with mainframe and minicomputers in hardware sophistication, memory capacity, and speed. The most significant feature of the Windows' processing capabilities is that it's a multitasking operating system though it still supports a single interactive user. Windows Operating System provides shared services to several users on a single network, supports multiple local server connections, and several simultaneous Web connections. The processing capabilities enable the operating system to provide accessibility features including display and readability, sounds and speech, and keyboard and mouse ("What Accessibility Features," 2007).

Processes and Threads:

The two important characteristics of Windows Operating System are its capability to provide support for symmetric multiprocessing and threads. Through its different routines, the operating system can function on any available processor with different routines functioning simultaneously on different processors. The operating system also supports the use of multiple threads of execution within the same process, which can also execute on different processors at the same time. This is largely because the operating system provides ways of sharing resources and data across processes and flexible communication capabilities for various processes.

Through the operating system, server processes may use several threads to process requests from various clients or users at the same time. The ability of this operating system to facilitate sharing of resources and data emanate from its heavy use of the concepts of object-oriented design. The approach also enables it to support the protection of resources from unauthorized use or access. The main object-oriented design concepts that are used by Windows Operating System include encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism, and object class and instance.

Data Protection:

Some of the most significant characteristics of Windows processes include the implementation of Windows processes as objects, the ability of an executable process to have one or more threads, and the in-built synchronization capabilities of process and thread objects. These capabilities are the essential characteristics that enable Windows Operating System to support protection of data. Generally, every process in the operating system is allocated a security access token that contains a user's security ID, which is used to validate the user's access to secured objects and restricted functions.

Since the process doesn't consist of a handle opened to it access token, the access token in turn determines the ability of the process to change its own attributes. As the process attempts to open the handle, the security system determines whether it's permitted access and allowed to change its own attributes.

Input and Output Devices:

Through the Windows Executive that consists of modules for certain system functions and offers an application program interface for user-mode program, the operating system is designed with components for input and output devices. Windows consists of an Input-Output manager that provides the structure with which input and output devices are accessible to applications. The Input-Output manager also has the task of transmitting applications and processes to the suitable device drivers for further processing. The manager executes all the input, output, and application program interfaces of the operating system and enforces naming and security for file systems and devices.

In addition to providing an identical interface that is accessible to all types of drivers, the Input / Output manager contains four modules i.e. cache manager, file system drivers, network drivers, and hardware device drivers. While the cache manager deals with caching for the whole input-output subsystem, the file system drivers is handled like another device driver and send messages for specific volumes to the suitable software driver for the device adapter. The network drivers provide integrated networking abilities and support for allocated applications. Through the Windows Executive dynamic link libraries, the hardware device drivers access hardware registers of the secondary devices.

Hardware and Software Support:

Through its device drivers, Windows operating system is designed to be attuned with the huge combination of personal computer hardware. The hardware support feature is one of the major advantages of Windows Operating System that makes it possible to develop a personal computer. In addition, the operating system provides a large user-base to multiple manufacturers of software such as those that are designed to primarily function with Windows (Cawley & McDonough, 2010).

Memory Management:

The operating system contains a virtual memory manager that controls the allocation of memory and how paging is performed. The Windows virtual memory manager is designed to function and operate in several platforms and sizes of user page. Every user process in this operating system consists of a distinct 32-bit address space that supports 4Gb of memory for each process. One of the key advantages of virtual memory manager is that it recovers memory for the system when memory becomes scarce through moving few recently used pages from the working sets of active processes (Stallings, 2005, p. 31).

Scheduling:

As a key component of the operating system, Windows has a preemptive scheduler with a flexible system of the level of priorities that incorporates round-robin scheduling and dynamic priority variation. The feature emanates from the program's design to be responsive to a user's needs in an interactive environment. Since priorities are handled in separate classes, the operating system consists of a File In File Out queue at every priority level. The highest-priority thread is usually active when this operating system is functioning on a single processor. However, this thread remains active and runs exclusively on extra processors when Windows in running in a multiprocessor.