Generation of Operating System

What is the Generation of Operating Systems?

As we know, an operating system is a program that manages all the interactions of hardware with a user and different external components of a system. Its main objective is to provide an interface where user can easily do their task without worrying about what is going on inside the computer system and internal levels. The generations of an operating system are described according to the major changes that have occurred in them from the beginning until now.

We, humans, are not able to learn or understand computer language and this is also valid for computers. They are also unable to understand human language. So, the operating system works here to manage all these works and provide an environment where the human can easily do their work on a system.

Following are the types of approaches that we need to know using which an operating system is designed for different kinds of users:-

• The first approach is to code, design, and implement an operating system that is suitable for a particular type of machine at one site. In this approach, we are designing the operating system specifically for one machine. So, we just take into account just one machine and we are figuring out what are the requirements of this machine and then we design the operating system. But this approach is good only when we are concerned about one machine only. This will not be a very efficient technique from a larger perspective because we want our operation to be able to work in multiple systems without having to redesign it.
• The second approach is operating systems that are designed and coded for working on a variety of machines at a variety of sites with many types of peripheral systems. It means this operating system will be able to work on a class of machines or a variety of machines irrespective of their configuration and the kind of machine they are. Suppose you have an operating system Linux Mint and you have this operating system on the CD and you installed that Linux Mint operating system on your computer system.

Now, let us assume your friend has another computer with a different kind of hardware configuration and a different machine. And even on your friend's system, you can install that Linux Mint operating system from that same CD. So, we see that irrespective of the machine that you have, the operating system can be installed on both of these systems. This is the most common design technique for designing an operating system that we use today.

Four Generations of Operating Systems

The changes that we can see in the operating system from its beginning to now are divided into four major generations. Let us see the four generations of operating systems in detail one by one and understand them in a better way.

The First Generation ( 1945 - 1955 ): Vacuum Tubes and Plugboards

The first generation of the operating system is described between the years 1945 to 1955. This was the time of the Second World War. Even digital computers were not built till then. For calculation purposes, people use a machine called calculating engines that are constructed using mechanical relays. These mechanical relays work very slowly and for that reason, the mechanical relays were replaced with vacuum tubes with the passing of time. These are slow machines. All the tasks related to these machines like designing, building, and maintaining were managed by a single group of people.

At that time, the concept of programming language was totally unknown and no operating system was there present at that time. So, all the programming and calculations were done using machine language. After that punch cards were introduced in 1950. Now, the programs are written on these punch cards and inserted into the system where the system reads the cards. These punch cards improved the performance of the computer system.

The operating system of these periods makes the transition between jobs smooth. This operating system was the starting of the batch processing system in which jobs are gathered together and executed in a sequence. When one job was running, total control of the machine was at that job only. Other jobs are then held in waiting until the running job gets totally executed. After that, the other job starts to run.

The Second Generation ( 1955 - 1965 ): Transistors and Batch Systems

The second generation of operating systems, let to face the development of the shared system with multiprogramming and the beginning of multiprocessing. Multiprogramming is defined as the system in which many user programs are stored in the main storage at once and switching between the jobs is done by the processor. In multiprogramming, the power of a machine is increased by using many processors in a single machine. In this generation, real-time systems are emerged to get a quick and real-time response where computers are used to control the working and functionality of industries like oil refineries, coal factories, etc.

Also, these generation operating systems are used in military operations to keep an eye on enemies and predict any kind of attack from the enemies because this operating system works in real-time and real-time data can be accessed and processed. Transistors were invented during this time which leads to the invention of computer systems that were called Main-frame. These mainframes were stored in big air-conditioned rooms and the staff was deputed to operate them. The batch system leads to improvement in the job execution time. Now, computers were fast from an early time. The jobs were gathered in a tray and then they were stored in a room called the Input room.

A magnetic tape is used to read the input. Then these magnetic tapes were placed on a tape driver and a batch operating system was loaded. The first job was read from the drive and running the job was the work of this batch operating system. And then the output of that is written on the second tape. When all the batch gets executed, the input tape and the output tape are removed and the tape that contains the output was printed.

The Third Generation ( 1965 - 1980 ): Integrated Circuits and Multiprogramming

Two types of computer systems were invented during this time ( 1965-1980 ), these are a scientific calculator and a commercial calculator. Both these systems were combined in the system/360 by a company named IBM. Integrated circuits become in use in computer systems these times. The use of integrated circuits increased the performance of systems many times as compared to the second-generation systems. The price of systems also decreased due to the use of integrated circuits as making integrated circuits on large scale requires a setup that costs high but can be produced the circuits in very large numbers costs cheaper, from that setup.

Third-generation operating systems were also introduced by multiprogramming. It means when there is one job that is under process, there is no need to wait in queue for other jobs to get executed. Other jobs also get scheduled in the processor which ensures that there should be no waste of time for the processor.

The Fourth Generation ( 1980 - Present ): Personal Computers

The time from 1980 to the present is termed the fourth generation of operating systems and systems. Personal computers become in use as integrated circuits are now easily available. Large-scale integrated circuits were integrated to make personal computers. These integrated circuits consist of many thousand transistors in a small silicon plate that may be of few centimeters in size.

Because of the use of silicon, the price of microcomputers become less than minicomputers. Because of their much less price, microcomputers starts to use extensively by a large number of people, which ultimately increased the computer network across the globe. The growth of networks created two types of operating systems that are the first one is Network operating systems and the second one is distributed operating systems. In these systems, a data communication interface is used and also serves as a server. Now, people can use the network operating system and the people are now able to get access and log in to machines that are remote. This also allows user to copy their files from one machine to many different machines.

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