A set of programs that process and manage – these are operating systems (OS). These programs act as an interface between application programs and the devices of a computing system (CS). They are also designed to manage computing processes and devices, effectively sharing resources for computation between the organization of reliable computations and computing processes. This attribute applies to many modern, latest general-purpose operating systems.
In the logical structure of a typical CS, the OS is located between application programs on one side, and devices with machine language, microarchitecture, and likely embedded proprietary microprograms on the other. Software developers abstract the OS from the functioning of devices and implementation details, providing a necessary minimal set of functions (application programming interface).
In many CSs, the operating system is the main, most important, and often the only part of the software. Since the 1990s, the most widespread OSes are UNIX and Microsoft Windows.
Most popular OS
The latest version of the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems is Windows 7. It is part of the Windows NT family, which succeeded Vista. This operating system was released to general availability on October 22, 2009, i.e., it was created less than 3 years after the release of Vista. The internet had original installation images of the latest version of the system as early as June 21, 2009. According to web analytics data, as of April 2012, the share of usage of this OS among all others was 51.3%. That means Windows 7 is the most widely used OS in the world.
Innovations in the system
This OS is equipped with multi-touch control. This capability was first demonstrated at the Tech Ed 08 conference, which took place in Orlando. The Start menu in the new OS lost its icons and became much shorter. The system also has more than 120 desktop wallpapers tailored to users around the world. For example, the Russian version of the OS features a Russian theme and has several corresponding high-resolution wallpapers.
Absolutely all versions of the newest system have more than 50 new fonts. To improve the correct display of all characters, previously existing fonts were refined. Windows 7 has more fonts for displaying non-Latin characters. The font management panel was also redesigned. By default, only the fonts that are installed with the system layout are displayed on it.
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