Operating System and File Management Essay

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Operation System Comparisons
Jeremy Brown, Daniel Rasmussen, Nicholas Person
POS/355
March 2, 2015
Alicia Pearlman
Operation System Comparisons
Introduction
There are four operating systems mainly being used today. The OS’s are Linux, UNIX, Microsoft Windows, and the Mac operating systems. Each system has its own characteristics that make it differ from the other competitors. The different characteristics influence how each OS performs different operations such as; memory management, process management, file management, and security. In order to compare each OS, we will discuss and compare how each of the operating systems handles each of the operations.
Memory Management
Memory management is responsible for the monitoring, allocation, use, and management of a systems memory ("Techopedia", 2015). The effective distribution of memory allows an OS to perform at maximum performance levels. Each of the four main operating systems handle memory management functions differently.
Unix:
Linux:
Microsoft:
MAC:
Process Management
Define Process Management
Unix
Linux
Microsoft
Mac
File Management Files within the system need to be able to be accessed in an orderly manner. The File system allows for the OS to locate and access the files as they are called for by the user or other programs. Each of the four major OS’s handle file management in their own unique way as each was designed for different purposes.
File Management within Unix
Unix uses six distinguished file types with the system. These types are Regular or ordinary, Directory, Special, Named Pipes, Links and Symbolic links. Each one of these file types serves their own purpose within the system. In the terms of file management, we will be looking at the regular or ordinary file type which most other OS’s consider as files.
Regular/Ordinary files contain data in blocks and is entered into the system by either the user or a program. Unix does not provide the file with any structure and treats the file a s stream of bytes.
Directories contain files names as well as the pointers to the associated Inodes. Directories are files that contain ordinary files that have special write protections as to only allow the file system write to them although read access is granted to user programs.
Special files only contain a mechanism for the mapping of physical devices to the file names. The file name are the access method for such devices as printers.
Named pipes is a interprocess communication facility. The pipe utilizes file buffers for the data received and provides the data on a first-in-first-out basis.
Links are simply alternative file names for currently existing files.
File management within Linux
Linux handles files essentially the same way as Unix. This is because Linux is based on Unix with only minor changes within the system. The main difference is that Linus uses a virtual file system.
Security
Techopedia defines operating system security as controlled access to programs and data stored in a system. It seems that we are hearing of another large company being hacked and hundreds of people’s secure information being accessed almost on a daily basis. These security breaches come at a cost. In a worldwide study conducted by IBM in 2014, the average breach costs companies $3.5 million (US). There some simple ways to keep a system secure like being sure to have a unique password, installing a firewall, or being sure your files are encrypted. We would like to show a comparison of security features that are available with each of the four main operating systems.
Security for MAC During our research we found a few security tools offered for the MAC operating system. Gatekeeper: This is a program that protects the MAC computer from malware. It also checks for proper Developer IDs from any app that was not downloaded from the MAC app store.
File Vault 2: This program encrypts all the data on the system.
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