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What Is The Most Popular OS in the World?
Roland Piquepaille writes "If your answer is Windows, you're plain wrong. It's ITRON, a Japanese real-time OS kernel that can be customized for any small-scale embedded systems. According to LinuxInsider.com, it is used by more than 3 billion microprocessors found in mobile phones, digital cameras, CD players and many other electronic devices including even satellites. The article looks at the competition in this market, notably RTLinux, the real-time version of Linux, and T-Linux, an environment for running middleware. This last effort could lead to the eTRON chip, an encryption device that offers secure data transfer across wireless networks and the Internet. One thing is sure for this market: the future is definitively open-source. This overview contains more details and external references."
Here and here.
According to the ITRON page linked, it is an operating system specification, not an operating system.
That would make it a competitor of Posix, instead of Linux.
RTLinux switches tasks in microseconds - and not many microseconds.
Actually the OS interacts with the programs; the programs interact then with people. People never interact with the OS.
From a CS perspective, you're correct - the OS is designed to manage resources and send program requests down to the microkernel/ISA level.
But from the contemporary perspective, the OS is a much richer bundle. Technically, using the Start Menu, manipulating files and folders on your desktop, and navigating folders in Explorer = interactions with a "program"; so are printer daemons/print queues, network interfaces, and the Control Panel. Even cutting-and-pasting is technically interacting with the clipboard "program". But these programs are so tightly bound to the OS that it's difficult to imagine a workable modern OS without them. Ask any user on the street, even sophisticated ones, what "program" they're using in these cases, and they'll all say "Windows" (or OS/X, or whatever OS they're running.)
If by "popular" you mean prolific, as does the author, then sure, ITRON and other embedded OS's are clear winners. But if by "popular" you mean user-recognizable - even software to which users may have developed an affinity - then I think Windows is still the OS of choice worldwide.
(Note: I'm clearly not a Microsoft shill - a search on my username will reveal posts/responses uniformly bashing Microsoft for a dozen justified reasons.)
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.