The Task Control Block ( TCB ) contains the state of a task in, e.g., OS/360 and successors on IBM System/360 architecture and successors.
96-495: In OS/360 , OS/VS1 , SVS , MVS/370 , MVS/XA , MVS/ESA , OS/390 and z/OS , the TCB contains, among other data, non-dispatchability flags and the general and floating point registers for a task that is not currently assigned to a CPU. A TCB provides an anchor for a linked list of other, related request blocks (RBs); the top-linked RB for a TCB contains the Program status word (PSW) when
192-472: A high-level language implementation of Unix made its porting to different computer platforms easier. Due to an earlier antitrust case forbidding it from entering the computer business, AT&T licensed the operating system's source code as a trade secret to anyone who asked. As a result, Unix grew quickly and became widely adopted by academic institutions and businesses. In 1984, AT&T divested itself of its regional operating companies , and
288-424: A minimalist functionality, while more elaborate window managers such as FVWM , Enlightenment , or Window Maker provide more features such as a built-in taskbar and themes , but are still lightweight when compared to desktop environments. Desktop environments include window managers as part of their standard installations, such as Mutter (GNOME), KWin (KDE), or Xfwm (xfce), although users may choose to use
384-505: A solution stack such as LAMP . The source code of Linux may be used, modified, and distributed commercially or non-commercially by anyone under the terms of its respective licenses, such as the GNU General Public License (GPL). The license means creating novel distributions is permitted by anyone and is easier than it would be for an operating system such as MacOS or Microsoft Windows . The Linux kernel, for example,
480-408: A Fixed number of Tasks (MFT) was intended to serve as a stop-gap until Multiprogramming with a Variable number of Tasks (MVT), the intended target configuration of OS/360, became available in 1967. Early versions of MVT had many problems, so the simpler MFT continued to be used for many years. After introducing new System/370 machines with virtual memory in 1972, IBM developed MFT 2 into OS/VS1 ,
576-469: A Local SRB (priority over only the local address space TCBs); and MVS's dispatcher must manage all of these with absolute consistency across as many as two processors (MVS/370) and as many as sixteen processors (successor systems). OS/360 OS/360 , officially known as IBM System/360 Operating System , is a discontinued batch processing operating system developed by IBM for their then-new System/360 mainframe computer , announced in 1964; it
672-490: A Variable number of Tasks (MVT) was the most sophisticated of three available configurations of OS/360 's control program, and one of two available configurations in the final releases. MVT was intended for the largest machines in the System/360 family. Introduced in 1964, it did not become available until 1967. Early versions had many problems and the simpler MFT continued to be used for many years. Experience indicated that it
768-466: A competing OS, agrees that "Linux wasn't designed, it evolved", but considers this to be a limitation, proposing that some features, especially those related to security, cannot be evolved into, "this is not a biological system at the end of the day, it's a software system." A Linux-based system is a modular Unix-like operating system, deriving much of its basic design from principles established in Unix during
864-470: A decade after their successors had been launched. The division between MFT and MVT arose because of storage limitations and scheduling constraints. Initially IBM maintained that MFT and MVT were simply "two configurations of the OS/360 control program", although later IBM described them as "separate versions of OS/360". IBM originally wrote OS/360 in assembly language . Later on, IBM wrote some OS/360 code in
960-971: A different window manager if preferred. Wayland is a display server protocol intended as a replacement for the X11 protocol; as of 2022 , it has received relatively wide adoption. Unlike X11, Wayland does not need an external window manager and compositing manager. Therefore, a Wayland compositor takes the role of the display server, window manager, and compositing manager. Weston is the reference implementation of Wayland, while GNOME's Mutter and KDE's KWin are being ported to Wayland as standalone display servers. Enlightenment has already been successfully ported since version 19. Additionally, many window managers have been made for Wayland, such as Sway or Hyprland, as well as other graphical utilities such as Waybar or Rofi. Linux currently has two modern kernel-userspace APIs for handling video input devices: V4L2 API for video streams and radio, and DVB API for digital TV reception. Due to
1056-412: A mainstream operating system and is the ancestor of today's widely used VSE . IBM released three variants of OS/360: PCP (Primary Control Program), a stop-gap which could run only one job at a time, in 1966; MFT ( Multiprogramming with Fixed number of Tasks) for the mid-range machines, and MVT (Multiprogramming with Variable number of Tasks) for the top end. MFT and MVT were used until at least 1981,
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#17328693510911152-548: A new approach to workload management, allowing users to define performance targets for high-priority batch jobs. This enabled users to give their systems more work than before without affecting the performance of the highest-priority jobs. MVS was IBM's first mainstream operating system on the System/370 to support what IBM called tightly coupled multiprocessing , in which 2 (later, up to 12, for IBM mainframes, and up to 16, for Amdahl mainframes) CPUs shared concurrent access to
1248-461: A new implementation of the catalog facility which enables applications to access files by name, without needing to know which disk drive(s) they are on. VSAM datasets must be defined in a VSAM catalog before they are used, and non-VSAM datasets can also be listed in a VSAM catalog. The MVS Master Catalog must be a VSAM catalog. Catalogs were originally provided in OS/360 in the form of CVOLs; MVS added
1344-714: A new language, Basic Systems Language (BSL), derived from PL/I. A large amount of the TSO code in Release 20 was written in BSL. TSS/360 was so late and unreliable that IBM canceled it, although IBM later supplied three releases of the TSS/370 PRPQ. By this time CP-67 was running well enough for IBM to offer it without warranty as a timesharing facility for a few large customers. These three options offered such similar facilities that porting applications between them usually required minimal effort;
1440-404: A place in server installations such as the popular LAMP application stack. The use of Linux distributions in home and enterprise desktops has been growing. Linux distributions have also become popular in the netbook market, with many devices shipping with customized Linux distributions installed, and Google releasing their own ChromeOS designed for netbooks. Linux's greatest success in
1536-498: A popular CLI shell. The graphical user interface (or GUI) used by most Linux systems is built on top of an implementation of the X Window System . More recently, the Linux community has sought to advance to Wayland as the new display server protocol, in place of X11. Many other open-source software projects contribute to Linux systems. Installed components of a Linux system include the following: The user interface , also known as
1632-658: A separate timesharing operating system, TSS/360 , for the System/360 Model 67 . There are at least two accounts of why IBM eventually decided to produce other, simpler batch-oriented operating systems: IBM introduced a series of stop-gaps to prevent System/360 hardware sales from collapsing—first Basic Programming Support (BPS) and BOS/360 (Basic Operating System, for the smallest machines with 8K byte memories), then TOS/360 (Tape Operating System, for machines with at least 16K byte memories and only tape drives), and finally DOS/360 (Disk Operating System), which became
1728-419: A separate article. This article adheres to IBM's usage of the term storage rather than memory . OS/360 assigns processors to tasks, which are analogous to light-weight processes or threads in other systems. Each task has a Task Control Block (TCB) and a stack of Request Blocks (RBs). A task is either dispatchable or nondispatchable and an RB is either waiting or not waiting. The Dispatcher selects
1824-445: A separate catalog structure for VSAM; later IBM added a third type of catalog known as an ICF catalog. (IBM removed support for CVOL and VSAM catalogs as of 2000, since they were not Y2K-compliant; hence in z/OS, only ICF catalogs are supported.) In 1974 IBM announced Systems Network Architecture , which was meant to reduce the cost of running large networks of terminals, mainly by using communications lines much more efficiently. This
1920-564: A set of libraries on tape that the installation had to restore to DASD in order to perform a system generation . IBM also offered a set of optional source tapes that the installation could use to modify and assemble modules that IBM normally provided as object code. In addition, IBM offered microfiche that had assembly listing of the basic program material and of subsequent service. IBM continued distributing source code until it imposed an Object Code Only (OCO) policy for licensed software. The other major operating system for System/360 hardware
2016-481: A significant business around Linux distributions. The free software licenses , on which the various software packages of a distribution built on the Linux kernel are based, explicitly accommodate and encourage commercialization; the relationship between a Linux distribution as a whole and individual vendors may be seen as symbiotic . One common business model of commercial suppliers is charging for support, especially for business users. A number of companies also offer
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#17328693510912112-493: A specialized business version of their distribution, which adds proprietary support packages and tools to administer higher numbers of installations or to simplify administrative tasks. Another business model is to give away the software to sell hardware. This used to be the norm in the computer industry, with operating systems such as CP/M , Apple DOS , and versions of the classic Mac OS before 7.6 freely copyable (but not modifiable). As computer hardware standardized throughout
2208-972: A system's software from one central location. A distribution is largely driven by its developer and user communities. Some vendors develop and fund their distributions on a volunteer basis, Debian being a well-known example. Others maintain a community version of their commercial distributions, as Red Hat does with Fedora , and SUSE does with openSUSE . In many cities and regions, local associations known as Linux User Groups (LUGs) seek to promote their preferred distribution and by extension free software. They hold meetings and provide free demonstrations, training, technical support, and operating system installation to new users. Many Internet communities also provide support to Linux users and developers. Most distributions and free software / open-source projects have IRC chatrooms or newsgroups . Online forums are another means of support, with notable examples being Unix & Linux Stack Exchange , LinuxQuestions.org and
2304-402: A user may interact with the application; however, certain extensions of the X Window System are not capable of working over the network. Several X display servers exist, with the reference implementation, X.Org Server , being the most popular. Server distributions might provide a command-line interface for developers and administrators, but provide a custom interface for end-users, designed for
2400-453: A vast body of work and may include both kernel modules and user applications and libraries. Linux vendors and communities combine and distribute the kernel, GNU components, and non-GNU components, with additional package management software in the form of Linux distributions. Many developers of open-source software agree that the Linux kernel was not designed but rather evolved through natural selection . Torvalds considers that although
2496-466: A while one could find that, although there was enough spare memory in total to run a program, it was divided into separate chunks none of which was large enough. System/360 lacked memory relocation hardware so memory compaction could not be used to reduce fragmentation. A facility called Rollout/Rollin could swap a running job out to secondary storage to make its memory available to another job. The rolled-out job would, however, have to be rolled-in to
2592-452: Is a routine in the nucleus that selects the work to be dispatched. It selects the highest priority task that: The system maintains a pair of TCB pointers known as TCB old and TCB new. A TCB new pointer of zero causes the dispatcher to search for an eligible task. When the dispatcher finds an eligible task, it sets the old and new TCB pointers. loads the registers from the TCB and loads the PSW from
2688-439: Is divided into a system ( fixed ) area at the bottom of real storage, a common area at the top and a private area in the middle. These contain the following areas. 'This is a section of storage at the highest physical address. It contains Linux This is an accepted version of this page Linux ( / ˈ l ɪ n ʊ k s / , LIN -uuks ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on
2784-562: Is licensed under the GPLv2, with an exception for system calls that allows code that calls the kernel via system calls not to be licensed under the GPL. Because of the dominance of Linux-based Android on smartphones , Linux, including Android, has the largest installed base of all general-purpose operating systems as of May 2022 . Linux is, as of March 2024 , used by around 4 percent of desktop computers . The Chromebook , which runs
2880-431: Is only available for IBM's virtual memory operating systems, since its mainframe software component, VTAM is only available with these operating systems. In 1977 IBM announced MVS/System Extensions, a program product (i.e., it cost extra money) which improved MVS performance and added functionality. Descendants of the original MVS are still used on the latest descendants of System/360, System/390 and zSeries ; it
2976-403: Is that the Linux kernel and other components are free and open-source software. Linux is not the only such operating system, although it is by far the most widely used. Some free and open-source software licenses are based on the principle of copyleft , a kind of reciprocity: any work derived from a copyleft piece of software must also be copyleft itself. The most common free software license,
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3072-577: Is the Bourne-Again Shell (bash), originally developed for the GNU Project, other shells such as Zsh are also used. Most low-level Linux components, including various parts of the userland , use the CLI exclusively. The CLI is particularly suited for automation of repetitive or delayed tasks and provides very simple inter-process communication . On desktop systems, the most popular user interfaces are
3168-468: Is typically built into the firmware and is highly tailored to the system. This includes routers , automation controls, smart home devices , video game consoles , televisions (Samsung and LG smart TVs ), automobiles (Tesla, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, and Toyota), and spacecraft ( Falcon 9 rocket, Dragon crew capsule, and the Ingenuity Mars helicopter). The Unix operating system
3264-415: Is used on a wide variety of devices including PCs, workstations , mainframes and embedded systems . Linux is the predominant operating system for servers and is also used on all of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers . When combined with Android , which is Linux-based and designed for smartphones , they have the largest installed base of all general-purpose operating systems . The Linux kernel
3360-487: The Free Software Foundation and wrote the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) in 1989. By the early 1990s, many of the programs required in an operating system (such as libraries, compilers , text editors , a command-line shell , and a windowing system ) were completed, although low-level elements such as device drivers , daemons , and the kernel , called GNU Hurd , were stalled and incomplete. Minix
3456-475: The Free Software Foundation uses and recommends the name " GNU/Linux " to emphasize the use and importance of GNU software in many distributions, causing some controversy . Thousands of distributions exist, many based directly or indirectly on other distributions; popular Linux distributions include Debian , Fedora Linux , Arch Linux , and Ubuntu , while commercial distributions include Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise . Other than
3552-736: The GNU toolchain , which includes the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and the GNU Build System . Amongst others, GCC provides compilers for Ada , C , C++ , Go and Fortran . Many programming languages have a cross-platform reference implementation that supports Linux, for example PHP , Perl , Ruby , Python , Java , Go , Rust and Haskell . First released in 2003, the LLVM project provides an alternative cross-platform open-source compiler for many languages. Proprietary compilers for Linux include
3648-470: The GUI shells , packaged together with extensive Desktop environments , such as KDE Plasma , GNOME , MATE , Cinnamon , LXDE , Pantheon , and Xfce , though a variety of additional user interfaces exist. Most popular user interfaces are based on the X Window System, often simply called "X". It provides network transparency and permits a graphical application running on one system to be displayed on another where
3744-510: The Linux kernel , an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds . Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution (distro), which includes the kernel and supporting system software and libraries — many of which are provided by the GNU Project — to create a complete operating system. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but
3840-476: The shell , is either a command-line interface (CLI), a graphical user interface (GUI), or controls attached to the associated hardware, which is common for embedded systems. For desktop systems, the default user interface is usually graphical, although the CLI is commonly available through terminal emulator windows or on a separate virtual console . CLI shells are text-based user interfaces, which use text for both input and output. The dominant shell used in Linux
3936-471: The virtual storage MVS and the 64-bit z/OS , are still run as of 2023 and maintain application-level compatibility with OS/360. IBM announced three different levels of OS/360, generated from the same tapes and sharing most of their code. IBM eventually renamed these options and made some significant design changes: Users often coined nicknames, e.g., "Big OS", "OS/MFT", but none of these names had any official recognition by IBM. IBM provided OS/360 as
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4032-399: The 1970s and 1980s. Such a system uses a monolithic kernel , the Linux kernel, which handles process control, networking, access to the peripherals , and file systems . Device drivers are either integrated directly with the kernel or added as modules that are loaded while the system is running. The GNU userland is a key part of most systems based on the Linux kernel, with Android being
4128-451: The 1980s, it became more difficult for hardware manufacturers to profit from this tactic, as the OS would run on any manufacturer's computer that shared the same architecture. Most programming languages support Linux either directly or through third-party community based ports . The original development tools used for building both Linux applications and operating system programs are found within
4224-663: The GNU General Public License (GPL), is a form of copyleft and is used for the Linux kernel and many of the components from the GNU Project. Linux-based distributions are intended by developers for interoperability with other operating systems and established computing standards. Linux systems adhere to POSIX, SUS , LSB , ISO , and ANSI standards where possible, although to date only one Linux distribution has been POSIX.1 certified, Linux-FT. Free software projects, although developed through collaboration , are often produced independently of each other. The fact that
4320-460: The Linux kernel, key components that make up a distribution may include a display server (windowing system) , a package manager , a bootloader and the Bash shell . Linux is one of the most prominent examples of free and open-source software collaboration. While originally developed for x86 based personal computers , it has since been ported to more platforms than any other operating system, and
4416-647: The Linux kernel-based ChromeOS , dominates the US K–12 education market and represents nearly 20 percent of sub-$ 300 notebook sales in the US. Linux is the leading operating system on servers (over 96.4% of the top one million web servers' operating systems are Linux), leads other big iron systems such as mainframe computers , and is used on all of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers (as of November 2017 , having gradually displaced all competitors). Linux also runs on embedded systems , i.e., devices whose operating system
4512-605: The Linux kernel. On July 3, 1991, to implement Unix system calls , Linus Torvalds attempted unsuccessfully to obtain a digital copy of the POSIX standards documentation with a request to the comp.os.minix newsgroup . After not finding the POSIX documentation, Torvalds initially resorted to determining system calls from SunOS documentation owned by the university for use in operating its Sun Microsystems server. He also learned some system calls from Tanenbaum's Minix text. Torvalds began
4608-844: The OS Dispatcher and the IOS , notably, among many others, remained coded in Assembly Language , which had been enhanced for OS/VS in the IFOX00 Assembler (from the older, OS/360 IEUASM Assembler). The new version's most noticeable feature was that it supported multiple virtual address spaces - different applications thought they were using the same range of virtual addresses, but the new system's virtual memory facilities mapped these to different ranges of real memory addresses. Each application's address space consists of 3 areas: operating system (one instance shared by all jobs); an application area which
4704-598: The OS Nucleus and Scheduler. However, because of quite different behavior and memory requirements, users commonly consider them de facto separate operating systems and refer to them as "early OS/360", "OS/MFT", "OS/MVT", respectively. MFT differs from MVT mainly in the way in which it manages memory: when installing MFT, customers specify in the system generation (SysGen) a fixed number of partitions , areas of memory with fixed boundaries, in which application programs can be run simultaneously. Primary Control Program (PCP)
4800-482: The Set System Mask (SSM) instruction to serialize disabled code between the two CPUs. For the most part an M65MP system has the same behavior and interfaces as any other MVT system. The keyword parameter SYS=VMS included M65MP as well as uniprocessor MVT. PCP, MFT and MVT provide similar facilities from the point of view of application programs: Some features were available only for MFT and MVT: When System/370
4896-466: The beginning, it was rather casually hacked on by huge numbers of volunteers coordinating only through the Internet. Quality was maintained not by rigid standards or autocracy but by the naively simple strategy of releasing every week and getting feedback from hundreds of users within days, creating a sort of rapid Darwinian selection on the mutations introduced by developers." Bryan Cantrill , an engineer of
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#17328693510914992-447: The complexity and diversity of different devices, and due to the large number of formats and standards handled by those APIs, this infrastructure needs to evolve to better fit other devices. Also, a good userspace device library is the key to the success of having userspace applications to be able to work with all formats supported by those devices. The primary difference between Linux and many other popular contemporary operating systems
5088-498: The consumer market is perhaps the mobile device market, with Android being the dominant operating system on smartphones and very popular on tablets and, more recently, on wearables . Linux gaming is also on the rise with Valve showing its support for Linux and rolling out SteamOS , its own gaming-oriented Linux distribution, which was later implemented in their Steam Deck platform. Linux distributions have also gained popularity with various local and national governments, such as
5184-464: The design of Unix served as a scaffolding, "Linux grew with a lot of mutations – and because the mutations were less than random, they were faster and more directed than alpha-particles in DNA ." Eric S. Raymond considers Linux's revolutionary aspects to be social, not technical: before Linux, complex software was designed carefully by small groups, but "Linux evolved in a completely different way. From nearly
5280-502: The development of 386BSD , from which NetBSD , OpenBSD and FreeBSD descended, predated that of Linux. Linus Torvalds has stated on separate occasions that if the GNU kernel or 386BSD had been available at the time (1991), he probably would not have created Linux. While attending the University of Helsinki in the fall of 1990, Torvalds enrolled in a Unix course. The course used a MicroVAX minicomputer running Ultrix , and one of
5376-527: The development of the Linux kernel on Minix and applications written for Minix were also used on Linux. Later, Linux matured and further Linux kernel development took place on Linux systems. GNU applications also replaced all Minix components, because it was advantageous to use the freely available code from the GNU Project with the fledgling operating system; code licensed under the GNU GPL can be reused in other computer programs as long as they also are released under
5472-476: The development of the components of the system and free software. An analysis of the Linux kernel in 2017 showed that well over 85% of the code was developed by programmers who are being paid for their work, leaving about 8.2% to unpaid developers and 4.1% unclassified. Some of the major corporations that provide contributions include Intel , Samsung , Google , AMD , Oracle , and Facebook . Several corporations, notably Red Hat, Canonical , and SUSE have built
5568-546: The federal government of Brazil . Linus Torvalds is the lead maintainer for the Linux kernel and guides its development, while Greg Kroah-Hartman is the lead maintainer for the stable branch. Zoë Kooyman is the executive director of the Free Software Foundation, which in turn supports the GNU components. Finally, individuals and corporations develop third-party non-GNU components. These third-party components comprise
5664-466: The first version of the Linux kernel on the Internet . Like GNU and 386BSD, Linux did not have any Unix code and therefore avoided any current legal issues . Desktop Linux distributions include a windowing system such as X11 or Wayland and a desktop environment such as GNOME , KDE Plasma or Xfce . Distributions intended for servers may not have a graphical user interface at all or include
5760-498: The highest priority dispatchable task whose current RB is not waiting. MVS assigns processors to address spaces , which are analogous to processes, and to Service Request Block (SRBs) and tasks within address spaces. Each address space has an Address Space Control Block (ASCB), a queue of SRBs and a queue of TCBs. In OS/360 all storage is visible to all code, although fetch protection may prevent access by unprivileged code to some control blocks or between jobs. Main storage for MVT
5856-463: The last system of this particular line. The first version of MFT shared much of the code and architecture with PCP, and was limited to four partitions . It was very cumbersome to run multiple partitions. Many installations used Houston Automatic Spooling Priority (HASP) to mitigate the complexity. MFT Version II (MFT-II) shared much more of the Control Program and Scheduler code with MVT, and
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#17328693510915952-516: The mid-1990s in the supercomputing community, where organizations such as NASA started to replace their increasingly expensive machines with clusters of inexpensive commodity computers running Linux. Commercial use began when Dell and IBM , followed by Hewlett-Packard , started offering Linux support to escape Microsoft 's monopoly in the desktop operating system market. Today, Linux systems are used throughout computing, from embedded systems to virtually all supercomputers , and have secured
6048-441: The notable exception. The GNU C library , an implementation of the C standard library , works as a wrapper for the system calls of the Linux kernel necessary to the kernel-userspace interface, the toolchain is a broad collection of programming tools vital to Linux development (including the compilers used to build the Linux kernel itself), and the coreutils implement many basic Unix tools . The GNU Project also develops Bash ,
6144-486: The only System/370 operating systems that do not have modern descendants. OS/VS2 release 1 was just MVT plus virtual memory and VSAM (see below). This version was eventually renamed OS/VS2 SVS , for Single Virtual Storage, when OS/VS2 Release 2, also known as MVS, for Multiple Virtual Storage, was introduced. SVS was intended as a stepping stone from MVT to MVS, and is only of historical interest today. In 1974 IBM released what it described as OS/VS2 Release 2 but which
6240-501: The operating system to their specific needs. Distributions are maintained by individuals, loose-knit teams, volunteer organizations, and commercial entities. A distribution is responsible for the default configuration of the installed Linux kernel, general system security, and more generally integration of the different software packages into a coherent whole. Distributions typically use a package manager such as apt , yum , zypper , pacman or portage to install, remove, and update all of
6336-646: The original memory locations when they again became available. In 1971 the Time Sharing Option (TSO) for use with MVT was added as part of release 20.1. TSO became widely used for program development because it provided an editor, the ability to submit batch jobs, be notified of their completion, and view the results without waiting for printed reports, and debuggers for some of the programming languages used on System/360. TSO in OS/360 communicated with terminals by using Telecommunications Access Method (TCAM). TCAM's name suggests that IBM hoped it would become
6432-455: The required texts was Operating Systems: Design and Implementation by Andrew S. Tanenbaum . This textbook included a copy of Tanenbaum's Minix operating system. It was with this course that Torvalds first became exposed to Unix. In 1991, he became curious about operating systems. Frustrated by the licensing of Minix, which at the time limited it to educational use only, he began to work on his operating system kernel, which eventually became
6528-404: The same memory (and a single copy of the operating system and peripheral devices), providing greater processing power and a degree of graceful degradation if one CPU failed (which, fortunately, became an increasingly rare event, as system up time rose from hours to days and, then, to years .) Initially MVS was supplied with a job queue manager called JES2 (Job Entry Subsystem 2), which
6624-412: The same or a compatible license. Torvalds initiated a switch from his original license, which prohibited commercial redistribution, to the GNU GPL. Developers worked to integrate GNU components with the Linux kernel, creating a fully functional and free operating system. Linus Torvalds had wanted to call his invention " Freax ", a portmanteau of "free", "freak", and "x" (as an allusion to Unix). During
6720-491: The same versions of most IBM Program Products , application and utility software ran on both. The text below mostly treats PCP , MFT and MVT as simply new names for the original SSS , MSS and MPS , although there were some design changes. Also, the text does not distinguish between M65MP and MVT. Officially, PCP, MFT and MVT are not separate operating systems from OS/360, they are only install-time configuration options—in today's words, three different variants of
6816-441: The software licenses explicitly permit redistribution, however, provides a basis for larger-scale projects that collect the software produced by stand-alone projects and make it available all at once in the form of a Linux distribution. Many Linux distributions manage a remote collection of system software and application software packages available for download and installation through a network connection. This allows users to adapt
6912-524: The standard access method for data communications, but in fact TCAM in OS/VS2 was used almost entirely for TSO and was largely superseded by Virtual Telecommunications Access Method (VTAM) in the mid-to-late 1970s. Also referred to as SYS=VMS in invocations of some macros that were system-dependent. Model 65 Multiprocessing (M65MP) is a variant of MVT. It runs on a 360/65 in Multisystem mode M65MP traps use of
7008-569: The start of his work on the system, some of the project's makefiles included the name "Freax" for about half a year. Initially, Torvalds considered the name "Linux" but dismissed it as too egotistical. To facilitate development, the files were uploaded to the FTP server ( ftp.funet.fi ) of FUNET in September 1991. Ari Lemmke, Torvalds' coworker at the Helsinki University of Technology (HUT) who
7104-406: The task is not assigned to a CPU. When the control program's dispatcher selects a TCB to be dispatched, the dispatcher loads registers from the TCB and loads the PSW from the top RB of the TCB, thereby dispatching the unit of work. OS/360 has the following types of request blocks An RB contains several fields, among them an old PSW, old general registers, a PSW and a wait count. The Dispatcher
7200-477: The top RB. If the dispatcher fails to find eligible work, it enters an enabled wait. With the introduction of MVS/370 and successor systems, a whole new environment was introduced: the Service Request Block (SRB), which generally has a higher priority than any Task Control Block, and, indeed, which itself has two distinct priorities: a Global SRB (priority over all local address space SRBs and TCBs) and
7296-471: The use case of the system. This custom interface is accessed through a client that resides on another system, not necessarily Linux-based. Several types of window managers exist for X11, including tiling , dynamic , stacking , and compositing . Window managers provide means to control the placement and appearance of individual application windows, and interact with the X Window System. Simpler X window managers such as dwm , ratpoison , or i3wm provide
7392-592: The use of virtual memory. IBM provided an OS/360 SYSGEN option for S/370 support, which did not support DAT but did: OS/VS1 is the successor to MFT, and offers similar facilities with several additions, e.g., RES, virtual memory. VSAM (see below) was initially available as an independent component release (ICR) and later integrated into the OS/VS1 base. IBM released fairly minor enhancements of OS/VS1 until 1983, and in 1984 announced that there would be no more. AIX/370 , AIX/ESA , DPPX , IX/370 , OS/VS1 and TSS/370 are
7488-559: The various distribution-specific support and community forums, such as ones for Ubuntu , Fedora, Arch Linux , Gentoo , etc. Linux distributions host mailing lists ; commonly there will be a specific topic such as usage or development for a given list. There are several technology websites with a Linux focus. Print magazines on Linux often bundle cover disks that carry software or even complete Linux distributions. Although Linux distributions are generally available without charge, several large corporations sell, support, and contribute to
7584-429: The word "Linux" should be pronounced, he included an audio guide with the kernel source code. However, in this recording, he pronounces Linux as /ˈlinʊks/ ( LEEN -uuks ) with a short but close front unrounded vowel , instead of a near-close near-front unrounded vowel as in his newsgroup post. The adoption of Linux in production environments, rather than being used only by hobbyists, started to take off first in
7680-445: The work of all those CPUs. Note: JES1 was the job queue manager for OS/VS1 (see above). IBM hoped that Virtual storage access method (VSAM) would replace its earlier sequential, indexed and direct access methods as it provided improved versions of these: These VSAM formats became the basis of IBM's database management systems , IMS/VS and DB2 - usually ESDS for the actual data storage and KSDS for indexes. VSAM also provides
7776-596: Was DOS/360 . OS/360 is in the public domain and can be downloaded freely. As well as being run on actual System/360 hardware, it can be executed on the free Hercules emulator , which runs under most UNIX and Unix-like systems including Linux , Solaris , and macOS , as well as Windows . There are OS/360 turnkey CDs that provide pregenerated OS/360 21.8 systems ready to run under Hercules. IBM originally intended that System/360 should have only one batch-oriented operating system, OS/360, capable of running on machines as small as 32 KiB. It also intended to supply
7872-472: Was announced in 1970 it offered essentially the same facilities as System/360 but with about 4 times the processor speeds of similarly priced System/360 CPUs. Then in 1972 IBM announced System/370 Advanced Functions , of which the main item was that future sales of System/370 would include virtual memory capability and this could also be retro-fitted to existing System/370 CPUs. Hence IBM also committed to delivering enhanced operating systems which could support
7968-501: Was conceived and implemented in 1969, at AT&T 's Bell Labs , in the United States by Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie , Douglas McIlroy , and Joe Ossanna . First released in 1971, Unix was written entirely in assembly language , as was common practice at the time. In 1973, in a key pioneering approach, it was rewritten in the C programming language by Dennis Ritchie (except for some hardware and I/O routines). The availability of
8064-494: Was created by Andrew S. Tanenbaum , a computer science professor, and released in 1987 as a minimal Unix-like operating system targeted at students and others who wanted to learn operating system principles. Although the complete source code of Minix was freely available, the licensing terms prevented it from being free software until the licensing changed in April 2000. Although not released until 1992, due to legal complications ,
8160-509: Was descended from HASP ( Houston Automatic Spooling Priority ) and also supported Remote Job Entry from workstations located elsewhere. JES2 can only manage jobs for one CPU (which might be a tightly coupled multiprocessor system). In 1976 IBM provided another option, JES3 (Job Entry Subsystem 3), a descendant of ASP ( Attached Support Processor ), which allows one CPU to manage a single job queue feeding work to several physically distinct CPUs, and therefore allows one operator's console to manage
8256-510: Was designed by Linus Torvalds , following the lack of a working kernel for GNU , a Unix -compatible operating system made entirely of free software that had been undergoing development since 1983 by Richard Stallman . While a separate working Unix-compatible system called Minix was later released, its license was not entirely free at the time. The first entirely free Unix for personal computers, 386BSD , did not appear until 1992, by which time Torvalds had already built and publicly released
8352-531: Was influenced by the earlier IBSYS/IBJOB and Input/Output Control System (IOCS) packages for the IBM 7090/7094 and even more so by the PR155 Operating System for the IBM 1410 / 7010 processors. It was one of the earliest operating systems to require the computer hardware to include at least one direct access storage device . Although OS/360 itself was discontinued, successor operating systems, including
8448-580: Was intended for machines with small memories. It is similar to MFT with one partition . Experience indicated that it was not advisable to install OS/360 on systems with less than 128 KiB of memory, although limited production use was possible on much smaller machines, such as 48 KiB of memory. IBM dropped the PCP option in the final releases of OS/360, leaving only MFT II and MVT, both of which required more memory. Also referred to as SYS=MIN in macro expansions that were system-dependent. Multiprogramming with
8544-459: Was later originally developed, it represented the first successful commercial attempt at distributing a primarily single-user microcomputer that ran a Unix operating system. With Unix increasingly "locked in" as a proprietary product, the GNU Project , started in 1983 by Richard Stallman , had the goal of creating a "complete Unix-compatible software system" composed entirely of free software . Work began in 1984. Later, in 1985, Stallman started
8640-509: Was much more flexible to run. The maximum number of partitions increased to 52. Later modifications of MFT-II added sub-tasking , so that the fixed number of tasks was no longer fixed, although the number of partitions did remain a limitation. Experience indicated that it was not advisable to install MFT on systems with less than 256 KiB of memory, which in the 1960s was quite a large amount. Also referred to as SYS=INT in macro expansions that were system-dependent. Multiprogramming with
8736-426: Was not advisable to install MVT on systems with less than 512 KiB of memory. MVT treated all memory not used by the operating system as a single pool from which contiguous regions could be allocated as required, by an unlimited number of simultaneous application and systems programs. This scheme was more flexible than MFT's and in principle used memory more efficiently, but was liable to fragmentation - after
8832-510: Was one of the volunteer administrators for the FTP server at the time, did not think that "Freax" was a good name, so he named the project "Linux" on the server without consulting Torvalds. Later, however, Torvalds consented to "Linux". According to a newsgroup post by Torvalds, the word "Linux" should be pronounced ( / ˈ l ɪ n ʊ k s / LIN -uuks ) with a short 'i' as in 'print' and 'u' as in 'put'. To further demonstrate how
8928-400: Was really a new operating system that was upwards-compatible with OS/VS2 Release 1. The Supervisor of the new system had been largely rewritten in a new dialect of BSL, PL/S ; BSL and PL/S were dialects of PL/I with extensions designed to transcribe Assembly language code, including privileged instructions needed to control the computer as a whole. Time-sensitive OS components, such as
9024-518: Was released from its obligation not to enter the computer business; freed of that obligation, Bell Labs began selling Unix as a proprietary product, where users were not legally allowed to modify it. Onyx Systems began selling early microcomputer-based Unix workstations in 1980. Later, Sun Microsystems , founded as a spin-off of a student project at Stanford University , also began selling Unix-based desktop workstations in 1982. While Sun workstations did not use commodity PC hardware, for which Linux
9120-475: Was renamed to OS/390 for System/390, and the 64-bit version for the zSeries was named z/OS . For reasons of size, this section concentrates on the MVT option of OS/360; PCP and MFT are very similar; with changes in nomenclature and some minor differences. OS/VS1 and SVS have much the same structure as MFT II and MVT, while MVS , although retaining much of the logic of MVT, has major enhancements better addressed in
9216-567: Was unique for each application; shared virtual area used for various purposes including inter-job communication. IBM promised that the application areas would always be at least 8MB. This approach eliminated the risk of memory fragmentation that was present in MVT and SVS, and improved the system's internal security. The new system rapidly became known as " MVS " (Multiple Virtual Storages), the original OS/VS2 became known as "SVS" (Single Virtual Storage) and IBM itself accepted this terminology and labelled MVS's successors "MVS/ xxx ". MVS introduced
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