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Comparison of operating systems

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The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of widely used and currently available operating systems. Please see the individual products' articles for further information.

Due to the large number and variety of available Linux distributions, all of these operating systems are grouped under a single entry in these tables. See comparison of Linux distributions for a detailed comparison. There are also a wide variety of minor BSD operating systems, many of which can be found at Comparison of BSD operating systems.

The tables specifically do not include subjective viewpoints on the merits of each operating system. For this kind of information, please see operating system advocacy.


General information

Creator First public release Predecessor Latest stable version Cost (USD) Preferred licenseTemplate:Fn Target system type
Version Release Date
AIX IBM 1986 System V R3 5.3 August 2004 Bundled with hardware Proprietary Server, Network Appliance, Workstation
AmigaOS Amiga, Inc. July 23, 1985 TRIPOS (as the disk operating component of AmigaOS) 4.0 Final 24 December 2006 Bundled with hardware Proprietary, Clones available under GNU GPL Workstation, Home Desktop
FreeBSD The FreeBSD Project December 1993 386BSD 6.2 January 15, 2007 Free BSD Server, Workstation, Network Appliance
HP-UX Hewlett-Packard 1983 Unix 11.23 "11i v2" December 2005 Non-free$400 Proprietary Server, Workstation
i5/OS IBM 1988 OS/400 V5R3 May 2004 Bundled with hardware Proprietary Server
IRIX SGI 1998 Unix 6.5.30 August 2006 Bundled with hardware and with updates available through overlays obtained from SGI Support Proprietary Server, Workstation
Inferno Bell Labs 1997 Plan 9 Fourth Edition July 2005 Free MIT/GNU GPL/GNU LGPL/LPL Network Appliance, Server, Embedded
GNU/Linux GNU Project, Linus Torvalds and al. 1992 UnixTemplate:Fn, MinixTemplate:Fn Kernel 2.6.20.3 March 13, 2007 Generally free, see Comparison of Linux distributions for details. GNU GPL and other licenses See: Comparison of Linux distributions
Mac OS Apple Inc. January 1984 NoneTemplate:Fn Template:Fn 9.2.2 May 12, 2002 Bundled with older Macs;

Free with OS X for PowerPCTemplate:Fn

Proprietary Workstation, Home Desktop
Mac OS X Apple Inc. March 2001 NeXTSTEP / OPENSTEP / Rhapsody, Mac OS 10.4.9 "Tiger" March 13, 2007 Non-freeBundled with hardware (but also sold separately)
Desktop $129 (Single User)
Family Pack $199 (5 license) 		Open source core system (Both Intel and Power PC versions) (APSL, GPL, others) with proprietary higher level API layers Workstation, Home Desktop
Mac OS X Server 10.4.9 Non-freeBundled with hardware (but also sold separately)
$499 (10 clients)
$999 (unlimited clients) 		Server
NetBSD The NetBSD Project May 1993 386BSD 3.1 November 4, 2006 Free BSD Network Appliance, Server, Workstation, Embedded
NetWare Novell 1985 S-Net 6.5 SP5a May 2006 Non-free$184 (1 user connection) Proprietary Server
OpenBSD The OpenBSD Project October 1995 NetBSD 1.0 4.0 November 1, 2006 Free BSD Server, Network Appliance, Workstation, Embedded
OpenVMS DEC (now HP) February 1978 RSX-11M 8.3 August 2006 Free for non-commercial use Proprietary Server, Workstation
OS/2 IBM and Microsoft December 1987 MS-DOS 4.52 December 2001 Non-free$300 Proprietary Home Desktop, Server
PC-BSD PC-BSD Software 2006 FreeBSDTemplate:Fn 1.2 July 12, 2006 Free BSD Desktop, Workstation, Server
Plan 9 Bell Labs 1993 Unix Fourth Edition (Daily snapshots) Free LPL Workstation, Server, Embedded, HPC
Solaris Sun July 1992 SunOS 10 11/06 December, 2006 Free CDDL Server, Workstation
Windows Server Microsoft July 27 1993 Windows 2000 Windows Server 2003 R2 (NT 5.2 SP1) November 15 2006 Non-free$379 Web Edition, $450 Small Business Server Proprietary Server, Network Appliance, Embedded, HPC
Microsoft Windows Microsoft November 20 1985 MS-DOS, VMS, OS/2Template:Fn Windows Vista (NT 6.0) November 2006-January 2007Template:Fn Non-freeHome $199-$239, Business $299, Ultimate $399 Proprietary Workstation, Home Desktop, media center, Tablet PC, embedded
RISC OS Acorn Computers, RISC OS Limited April 1989 ARTHUR, also the BBC Master OS RISC OS 4.39 "Adjust" Non-free$127 (£70) Proprietary; originally bundled with computer educational desktop, home computer
ZETA yellowTAB June 2005 BeOS R5 1.2 April 27, 2006 Non-freeProfessional $110, Student $80 Proprietary Home Desktop, Media Workstation
STOP 6 / XTS-400 BAE Systems 2003 STOP 5 / XTS-300 6.3 June 2006 Non-freecontact BAE Systems Proprietary Server, Workstation, cross-domain solution, network guard
ReactOS ReactOS development team 1996 Windows NT 0.3.1 March 11, 2007 Free GNU GPL, GNU LGPL Workstation, Home Desktop
Creator First public release Predecessor Version Release Date Cost (USD) Preferred licenseTemplate:Fn Target system type

Template:Fnb Most OS distributions include bundled software with various other licenses.
Template:Fnb Although Lisa OS ran on the same microprocessor and was developed by Apple Computer at the same time as Mac OS, very little code was shared between the two. [1]
Template:Fnb Mac OS versions up to 7.5.5 are available free of charge here.
Template:Fnb Version NT 5.2 is the latest release of Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. The latest 32-bit build is version NT 5.1 SP2
Template:FnbGNU is a recursive acronym for GNU's Not Unix, which was chosen because its design is Unix-like, but differs from Unix by being Free software and by not containing any Unix code.
Template:FnbMinix inspired the Linux kernel. No code from Minix was used to create the Linux kernel.
Template:FnbPC-BSD uses FreeBSD as a base system with custom configuration and several desktop oriented tools to create an easy to use FreeBSD system for Desktops and Workstations.
Template:Fnb Mac OS 7.6 was the first Mac OS operating system to be labeled Mac OS. Operating systems prior to this were just known by System #.#, starting from System Software 0.1 (available only to developers) up until System Software 7.5 (System for short). System 7.5.1 was the first "Mac OS" operating system to feature the "Happy Mac" logo on startup. The Happy Mac was retired when Apple released Mac OS X 10.2, codename "Jaguar". Template:Fnb Windows Vista was released to manufacturing on November 8 2006, and was subsequently made available to software developers and businesses in November 2006, with retail availability following on January 30 2007

Technical information

Supported architectures Supported file systems Kernel type Lines of code GUI on by defaultTemplate:Fn Package management Update management Primary APIsTemplate:Fn
AIX POWER, PPC JFS, JFS2, ISO 9660, UDF, NFS, SMBFS, GPFS Monolithic No installp, RPM Service Update Management Assistant (SUMA) SysV, POSIX
AmigaOS 68k, PPC (x86 Clone available see AROS) Proprietary (OFS, FFS,SFS, PFS), FAT, ISO 9660, UDF, many others via 3rd party drivers Microkernel Yes Installer (almost not necessary)Template:Fn none (almost not necessary) Proprietary, POSIX environment functions available thru GNU licensed Amiga ixemul.library
FreeBSD x86, x86-64, PC98, SPARC, others UFS2, ext2, ext3, FAT, ISO 9660, UDF, NFS, ReiserFS (read only), XFS (experimental) and others Monolithic with modules No ports tree, packages by source (CVSup, portsnap), network binary update (freebsdupdate) BSD, POSIX
HP-UX PA-RISC,IA-64 VxFS, HFS, ISO 9660, UDF, NFS, SMBFS Monolithic with modules No swinstall ? SysV, POSIX
Linux x86, x86-64, PPC, SPARC, Alpha, others ext2, ext3, ext4, ReiserFS, FAT, ISO 9660, UDF, NFS, and others Monolithic with modules See: Comparison of Linux distributions POSIX
Inferno x86, PPC, SPARC, Alpha, MIPS, others Styx/9P2000, kfs, FAT, ISO 9660 Monolithic with modules, user space file systems Yes - ? proprietary
Mac OS Classic 68k, PPC HFS+, HFS, AFP, ISO 9660, FAT, UDF Monolithic with modules Yes Apple Installer Software Update proprietary, Carbon
Mac OS X PPC, x86 HFS+ (default), HFS, UFS, AFP, ISO 9660, FAT, UDF, NFS, SMBFS, NTFS (read only), FTP, WebDAV Hybrid ~86 million[1] Yes Mac OS X Installer Software Update Carbon, Cocoa, BSD/POSIX, X11 (since 10.3)
NetBSD x86, x86-64, PPC, SPARC, 68k, Alpha, others UFS, UFS2, ext2, FAT, ISO 9660, NFS, LFS, and others Monolithic with modules NoTemplate:Fn pkgsrc by source (CVS, CVSup, rsync) or binary (using sysinst) BSD, POSIX
NetWare x86 NSS, NWFS, FAT, NFS, AFP, UDF, CIFS, ISO 9660 Hybrid Yes NWCONFIG.NLM, RPM, X-Windows-based GUI installer binary updates, ZENWorks for Servers, Red Carpet proprietary
OES-Linux x86 PPC NSS, NFS, AFP, UDF, CIFS, ISO 9660, Netware Traditional File System Monolithic with modules No RPM, X-Windows-based GUI installer binary updates, ZENWorks for Server, Red Carpet proprietary
OpenBSD x86, x86-64, SPARC, 68k, Alpha, VAX, others ffs, ext2, FAT, ISO 9660, NFS, some others Monolithic with modules NoTemplate:Fn ports tree, packages by source BSD, POSIX
OpenVMS VAX, Alpha, IA-64 Files-11, ISO 9660, NFS Monolithic with modules No PCSI, VMSINSTAL - proprietary, Unix-like
OS/2 x86 HPFS, JFS, FAT, ISO 9660, UDF, NFS Monolithic No Feature Install and others - proprietary
PC-BSD x86 Template:Fn UFS2, ext2, ext3, FAT, ISO 9660, UDF, NFS, ReiserFS (read only), XFS (experimental) and others Monolithic with modules Yes ports tree, packages, PBI Graphical Installers by PBI updates, source (CVSup, portsnap), network binary update (freebsdupdate) BSD, POSIX
Plan 9 x86, Alpha, MIPS, PPC, SPARC, others fossil/venti, 9P2000, kfs, ext2, FAT, ISO 9660 Monolithic, user space file systems Yes None replica Unix-like (and optional POSIX compatibility layer)
ReactOS x86, Power PC FAT Hybrid 1-2 mil Yes none none Windows API
RISC OS ARM (both 26 and 32-bit) Acorn ADFS, Econet ANFS, FAT, ISO9660, many others as loadable filesystems Unprotected monotasking microkernel with large number of relocatable modules Yes Applications self-contained; hardware drivers often in ROM none Huge number of SWI calls; extensive C libraries
Solaris x86, x86-64, SPARC UFS, ZFS, ext2, FAT, ISO 9660, UDF, NFS, some others Monolithic with modules Yes SysV packages (pkgadd) Sun Update Connection SysV, POSIX
STOP 6 / XTS-400 x86 proprietary Monolithic No RPM for some untrusted applications binary updates via snail-mail and proprietary tools some SysV, some POSIX, some Linux, some proprietary
Windows Server x86, x86-64, IA-64 NTFS, FAT, ISO 9660, UDF; 3rd-party drivers support ext2, ext3, reiserfsTemplate:Fn Hybrid Yes MSI, custom installers Windows Update Windows API, .NET
Windows x86, x86-64, IA-64 NTFS, FAT ISO 9660, UDF; 3rd-party drivers support ext2, ext3, reiserfsTemplate:Fn Hybrid ~40 million[citation needed] Yes MSI, custom installers Windows Update Windows API, .NET
ZETA x86 BFS (default), FAT, ISO 9660, UDF, HFS, AFP, ext2, CIFS, NTFS (read only), ReiserFS (read only, up to v3.6) Hybrid Yes SoftwareValet, script-based installers none POSIX, BeOS API
Supported architectures Supported file systems Kernel type Lines of code GUI on by defaultTemplate:Fn Package management Update management Primary APIsTemplate:Fn

Template:Fnb Operating systems where the GUI is not installed and turned on by default are often bundled with an implementation of the X Window System. However, installing X is usually optional.
Template:Fnb Most operating systems use proprietary APIs in addition to any supported standards.
Template:Fnb NetBSD and OpenBSD includes the X Window System as base install sets rather than packages within the ports collection. It includes some local changes and is managed as part of the NetBSD/OpenBSD source tree.
Template:Fnb Windows can read or write to Ext2 and Ext3 file systems only when a driver from FS-driver or ext2fsd is installed. However, using Explore2fs, Windows can read, but not write, from Ext2 and Ext3 file systems. Windows can also access ReiserFS through rfstool and related programs.
Template:Fnb only i686 CPU
Template:Fnb Amiga OS features since OS 2.0 version a standard centralized Install utility called Installer, which could be used by any software house to install programs. It works as a LISP language interpreter, and install procedures could be listed as simple text. AmigaOS can also benefit of a 3rd party copyrighted library called XPKMaster.Library. This library is freely distributable and publicly available on Aminet Amiga centralized repository of all Open Source or Free programs and utilities. XPKMaster.Library, complete with GUI, it is made on modules and capable to manage over 300 compression methods and package systems, including those widely accepted as standards such as .ZIP, .CAB, .LHA, .LZX, .RPM, etc.

Security

Resource access control Subsystem isolation mechanisms Integrated firewall Encrypted file systems Data execution prevention Known unpatched vulnerabilitiesTemplate:Fn
hardware emulation number oldest
AIX Unix, ACLs chroot IP Filter, IPSec VPNs, basic IDS No ? 3 2002-10-11
FreeBSD Unix, ACLs, MAC chroot, jail, MAC Partitions IPFW2, IPFilter, PF Yes ? 4 -
HP-UX Unix, ACLs chroot IPFilter No ? 0 -
Inferno Unix Namespaces ? ? No No n/a
GNU/Linux Unix, ACLsTemplate:Fn, MAC chroot, Capability-based securityTemplate:Fn, seccomp, SELinux, IPSec Netfilter/Varied by distribution Yes Yes NoTemplate:Fn See comparison of Linux distributions
Mac OS Classic none none none No No No 0 -
Mac OS X Unix, ACLsTemplate:Fn chroot ipfw Yes No Yes (Intel Only) 4 2006-12-05
NetBSD Unix, Veriexec chroot, systrace IPFilter, PF Yes Yes No n/a
NetWare Directory-enabled ACLs Protected Address Spaces IPFLT.NLM Yes Yes No n/a
OES-Linux Directory-enabled ACLs chroot IPFilter Yes Yes No n/a
OpenBSD Unix chroot, systrace PF Yes Yes Yes 0 -
OpenVMS ACLs, Privileges logical name tables ? ? ? 0 -
OS/2 ACLsTemplate:Fn none none No ? n/a
PC-BSD Unix, ACLs, MAC chroot, jail, MAC Partitions IPFW2, IPFilter, PF YesTemplate:Fn ? 0 -
Plan 9 Unix (?) Namespaces ipmux Yes No No n/a
Solaris Unix, RBAC, ACLs, Privileges chroot, ContainersTemplate:Fn IPFilter ? Yes No 2 2005-04-13
Windows Server 2003 ACLs, Privileges, RBAC Win32 WindowStation, Desktop, Job objects Windows Firewall,IPSec TCP\IP Filtering Yes Yes Yes 9 2003-06-11
Windows ACLs Win32 WindowStation, Desktop, Job objects Windows Firewall (XP and later), TCP\IP Filtering (NT Based systems), IPSec Yes (NTFS Only) Yes Yes 21 2002-12-30
ZETA Unix Template:Fn none none No No No n/a
STOP 6 / XTS-400Template:Fn Unix, Multilevel security, Biba mandatory integrity, ACLs, Privileges, subtype mechanism Multilevel security, Biba Integrity Model, subtype mechanism customer would have to install their own application No No No 0 -
Resource access control Subsystem isolation mechanisms Integrated firewall Encrypted file systems hardware emulation number oldest
Data execution prevention Known unpatched vulnerabilitiesTemplate:Fn

Template:Fnb Comparison of known unpatched vulnerabilities is based on Secunia vulnerabilities reports with a severity of less critical and above. Updated daily.
Template:Fnb Posix ACL support is included in Linux 2.6, but requires a file system capable of storing them (such as ext3, XFS or ReiserFS).
Template:Fnb A jail mechanism is available separately in the Linux-VServer project, but is not integrated into any mainline Linux kernel.
Template:Fnb The Exec Shield and PaX extensions provide NX emulation on x86 hardware. They are not yet integrated inside the mainline kernel but are available as patches or separate kernels
Template:Fnb ACLs were added to Mac OS X beginning with version 10.4.
Template:Fnb ACLs are available only in OS/2 Server versions with HPFS386 filesystem.
Template:Fnb "Solaris Containers" (including "Zones") are a jail-type mechanism introduced with Solaris 10.
Template:Fnb Zeta has full Unix file permissions, but the OS is single user, and users always run as superuser.
Template:Fnb STOP 6 is certified under Common Criteria at EAL5+.
Template:Fnb Additionally swap space may be encrypted during installation, uses memory based tmp file storage by default.

References

  1. ^ Jobs, Steve (2006). "Live from WWDC 2006: Steve Jobs Keynote". Retrieved 2007-02-16. 86 million lines of source code that was ported to run on an entirely new architecture with zero hiccups. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |note= ignored (help)CS1 maint: year (link)

See also

The Wikibook [[wikibooks:|]] has a page on the topic of: A Neutral Look at Operating Systems
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