Exam 101

Introduction I
Computers, Software and Operating
Systems

Contents
What Is A Computer, Anyway?
Components Of A Computer
Software
The Most Important Operating Systems
Windows And OS X
Linux
More Differences And Similarities





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Exam 101: Introduction I

What Is A Computer, Anyway?

Early computers
The first computers in a modern sense were built during World War II to assist with decrypting secret messages
or doing difficult calculations, and they were big, complicated and error-prone devices the electronic
components such as transistors or integrated circuits which todays computers consist of hadnt been invented
yet. What did come to light during this time and the years immediately after the war were a number of basic
assumptions that had to hold for a device to be considered a computer:
A computer processes data according to a sequence of automatically executed instructions, a
program.
Programs must allow for conditional execution and loops.
It must be possible to change or replace the program that a computer executes.
For example, many technical devices from television sets and digital cameras to washing machines or cars
today contain programmed control units, almost small computers. Even so, we dont consider these devices
computers, because they only execute fixed, unchangeable programs. Conversely, a pocket calculator can be
used to process data, but at least as long as it isnt a more expensive programmable calculator that
doesnt happen automatically; a human being must tap the keys.
In the early 1950s, computers were highly specialized devices that one would exactly as Aiken stipulated
expect to see mostly within research institutions. Science-fiction films of the time display the halls, replete with
rows of cupboards containing mysterious spinning reels. Within the space of not quite 70 years, this image has
changed dramatically.
Small computers in the 1970s
Ken Olsen was the CEO of another computer manufacturer, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), which
spearheaded the development of small computers in the 1970s2 where small at the time was understood
as meaning something like does not need a machine hall with air conditioning and its own power plant and
costs less than a million dollars; advances in hardware technology allowed this to change, towards the end of
the 1970s, to something like can be bodily lifted by two people.



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DEC is important to the Linux community because Unix the operating system that inspired
Linus Torvalds to start Linux some twenty years later was first developed on DEC PDP-8 and
PDP-11 computers.

Home computers
The 1970s also saw the advent of the first home computers. These cannot be compared with todays PCs
one had to solder them together on ones own (which would be physically impossible today), and they rarely
featured a reasonable keyboard and seldom if ever a decent display. They were for the most part a tinkerers
pastime, much like an electric train set, because in all honesty they werent really useful for much at all. Even so,
they were computers in the sense of our earlier definition, because they were freely programmable even
though the programs had to be laboriously keyed in or (with luck) loaded from audio cassette tape. Still they
werent taken completely seriously, and Ken Olsens quote has accordingly often been misconstrued: He had
nothing whatsoever against small computers (he was in the business of selling them, after all). What he didnt
conceive of was the idea of having ones complete household (heating, lights, entertainment and so on)
controlled by a computer an idea that was quite hypothetical at the time but today seems fairly feasible and
perhaps no longer as absurd.
IBM PC
Only during the late 1970s and 1980s, home computers mutated from kits to ready-to-use devices (names like
Apple II or Commodore 64 may still be familiar to the older members of our audience) and started
appearing in offices, too. The first IBM PC was introduced in 1981, and Apple marketed the first Mac- IBM PC
intosh in 1984. The rest, as they say, is history but one should not forget that the world of computers does
not consist of PCs and Macs only. The giant, hallfilling computers of yore are still around even though they
tend to get rarer and often really consist of large groups of PCs that are quite closely related to the PCs on our
tables and which cooperate. However, the principle hasnt changed from Howard Aikens time: Computers are
still devices that automatically process data according to changeable programs which may contain conditions
and loops. And things are likely to stay that way.









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Components Of A Computer

Lets take the opportunity of casting a glance at the innards of a computer (or, more precisely, an IBM-
compatible PC) and the components we are likely to find there:
Processor
The processor (or CPU, for central processing unit) is the core of the computer: Here is where the automatic
program-controlled data processing takes place that actually makes it a computer. Todays processors usually
contain several cores, which means that the major components of the processor exist multiple times and can
operate independently, which in principle increases the computers processing speed and thereby its
performance and particularly fast computers often have more than one processor. PCs normally contain
processors by Intel or AMD (which may differ in detail but can execute the same programs). Tablets and
smartphones generally use ARM processors, which arent quite as powerful but much more energy-efficient.
Intel and AMD processors cannot directly execute programs prepared for ARM processors and vice-versa.
RAM
A computers working memory is called RAM (or random-access memory, where random means
arbitrary rather than haphazard). This stores not only the data being processed, but also the program code
being executed.
This is an ingenuous trick going back to the computing pioneer John von Neumann, a
contemporary of Howard Aiken. It implies that there is no longer a difference between code
and data this means programs can manipulate code just as well as addresses or kitchen
recipes. (In the old days, one would program by plugging and unplugging leads on the
outside of the computer, or programs were punched on paper tape or cards and could not be
changed straightforwardly.)
Todays computers normally feature 1 gibibyte of RAM or more. 1 gibibyte is 230, or 1,073,741,824bytes3
really an inconceivably large number. By way of comparison: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows contains
approximately 600 pages of up to 1,700 letters, spaces, and punctuation characters perhaps a million
characters. Hence, one gibibyte corresponds to about 1,000 Harry Potter tomes, at somewhat more than a
pound per book that is already a van full of them, and if youre not just interested in the exploits of the young
wizard, 1,000 books is an impressive library.






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Graphics card
Not so long ago people were happy if their computer could control an electric typewriter to produce its output.
The old home computers were connected to television sets, producing images that could often only be called
atrocious. Today, on the other hand, even simple smartphones feature quite impressive graphics, and
common PCs contain graphics hardware that would have cost the equivalent of an expensive sports car or small
house in the 1990s4. Todays watchword is 3D acceleration, which doesnt mean that the display actually
works in 3D (although even that is slowly getting fashionable) but that processing the graphics inside the
computer does not just involve left, right, top and bottom the directions visible on a computer monitor but
also front and back, and that in quite a literal sense: For photorealistic games it is quite essential whether a
monster lurks in front of or behind a wall, hence whether it is visible or not, and one of the goals of modern
graphic cards is to relieve the computers CPU of such decisions in order to free it up for other things.
Contemporary graphics cards contain their own processors, which can often perform calculations much faster
than the computers own CPU but are not as generally useful.
Many computers dont even contain a separate graphics card because their graphics hardware
is part of the CPU. This makes the computer smaller, cheaper, quieter and more energy-
efficient, but its graphics performance will also take somewhat of a hit which may not be an
actual problem unless you are keen on playing the newest games.
Motherboard
The motherboard is the (usually) rectangular, laminated piece of plastic that the computers CPU, RAM, and
graphics card are affixed to together with many other components that a computer requires, such as
connectors for hard disks, printers, a keyboard and mouse, or network cables, and the electronics necessary to
control these connectors. Motherboards for computers come in all sorts of sizes and colours5 for small, quiet
computers that can act as video recorders in the living room or big servers that need a lot of space for RAM and
several processors.
Power supply
A computer needs electricity to work how much electricity depends on exactly which components it contains.
The power supply is used to convert the 240 V AC mains supply into the various low DC voltages that the
electronics inside the computer require. It must be selected such that it can furnish enough power for all the
components (fast graphics cards are usually the number-one guzzlers) while not being overdimensioned so that
it can still operate efficiently.
Most of the electricity that the power supply pumps into the computer will sooner or later end up as heat,
which is why good cooling is very important.
For simplicity, most computers contain one or more fans to blow fresh air onto the expensive electronics, or to
remove hot air from the case. With appropriate care it is possible to build computers that do not require fans,



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which makes them very quiet, but such computers are comparatively expensive and usually not quite as fast
(since, with processors and graphics cards, fast usually means hot).
Hard disks
While a computers RAM is used for the data currently being processed (documents, spreadsheets, web pages,
programs being developed, music, videos, and of course the programs working on the data), data not
currently in use are stored on a hard disk. The main reason for this is that hard disks can store much more data
than common computers RAMthe capacity of modern hard disks is measured in tebibytes (1 TiB = 240 Byte),
so they exceed typical RAM capacities by a factor of 1001000.
We pay for this increase in space with a decrease in retrieval times RAM access times are
measured in nanoseconds while those to data on (magnetic) hard disks are measured in
milliseconds. This is a mere 6 orders of magnitudethe difference between a meter and 1,000
kilometers.
Traditionally, hard disks consist of rotating platters coated with a magnetisable material. Read/write heads can
magnetize this material in different places and re-read the data thus stored later on. The platters rotate at 4,500
to 15,000 RPM, and the difference between the read/write head and the platter is extremely minute (up to 3
nm). This means that hard disks are quite sensitive to disruption and falls, because if the read/write head comes
into contact with the platter while the disk is runningthe dreaded head crashthe disk is destroyed.
Newfangled hard disks for mobile computers have acceleration sensors which can figure out
that the computer is falling, to try and shut down the hard disk in order to prevent damage.

The newest fashion is SSDs or solid-state disks, which instead of magnetized platters use flash memory for
storagea type of RAM which can maintain its content even without electricity. SSDs are faster than magnetic
hard disks, but also considerably more expensive per gigabyte of storage. However, they contain no moving
parts, are impervious to being shoved or dropped, and save energy compared to conventional hard disks, which
makes them interesting for portable computers.
SSDs are also reputed to wear out since the flash storage spaces (called cells) are only
rated for a certain number of write operations. Measurements have shown that this does not
lead to problems in practice.

There are various methods of connecting a hard disk (magnetic or SSD) to a computer. Currently most common
is serial ATA (SATA), older computers use parallel ATA, also called IDE. Servers also use SCSI or SAS
(serially attached SCSI) disks. For external disks, one uses USB or eSATA (a variant of SATA with sturdier
connectors).



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Incidentally: The difference between gigabytes and gibibytes (or terabytes and tebibytes) is
most notable with hard disks. For example, you buy a 100 GB drive, connect it to your
computer and, shock horror, realize that your computer only shows you 93 GB of free space
on the new disk! However, your drive is not damaged (lucky you) the disk drive
manufacturer only uses (quite correctly) gigabytes, i. e., billions of bytes, while your
computer probably (if inaccurately) calculates the free space in units of gibibytes or 230
bytes.
Optical drives
Besides hard drives, PCs usually support optical drives that can read, and often also write, media such as CD-
ROMs, DVDs or Blu-ray disks. (Mobile devices sometimes have no room physically for an optical drive, which
does not mean such drives cant be connected externally.) Optical mediathe name derives from the fact that
the information on there is accessed by means of a laserare mostly used for the distribution of software and
content (music or films), and their importance is waning as more and more companies rely on the Internet as
a distribution medium.
In former times one also considered optical media for backup copies, but today this is no
longer realistica CD-ROM can hold up to approximately 900 MiB of data and a DVD up to 9
GiB or so, thus for a full backup of a 1 TiB hard disk you would require 1000 CD-size or 100
DVD-size media, and constantly swapping them in and out would also be a hassle. (Even Blu-
ray discs can only fit 50 GiB or so, and drives that can write to Blu-ray discs are still fairly
expensive.)
Display
You can still see it in old movies: the green sheen of the computer screen. In reality, green displays have all but
disappeared, colour is in fashion, and new displays are no longer massive hulks like the CRTs (cathode-ray tubes)
we used to have, but are slim, elegant monitors based on liquid crystals (LCD, liquid-crystal display). LCDs
dont confine themselves to the advantage of taking up less space on a desk, but also neither flicker nor bother
the user with possibly harmful radiationa win-win situation. There are a few disadvantages such as colour
changes when you look at the screen at a too-acute angle, and cheaper devices may deliver a blotchy picture
because the backlight is not uniform.
With CRTs one used to take care to not let them stand around unused showing the same
picture for long periods of time, because the picture could burn in and appear as a
permanent blurry backdrop. Accordingly one used a screen saver, which after a certain
amount of idle time would replace the content of the screen by a more or less cute
animation to avoid burn-in (the classic was an aquarium with fish and other aquatic fauna).
LCDs no longer suffer from the burn-in problem, but screen savers are still sticking around
for decorative value.



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Resolution
LCDs are available in all sizes from smartphone to wall-size large screens; resolution their most important
property is the resolution, which for PC displays usually ranges between 1366768(horizontally vertically) and
19201080 pixels. (Lower and higher resolutions are possible, but do not necessarily make economic or visual
sense.) Many computers support more than one screen in order to enlarge the working space.
Also usual today is an aspect ratio of 16 : 9, which corresponds to high-definition television
actually a silly development, since most computers arent even used for watching television,
and a taller but narrower display (such as the formerly-common 4 : 3format) is better suited
most of the more frequently-used applications like word processing or spreadsheet
calculations.
Other peripherals
Of course you can connect many more devices to a computer besides the ones we mentioned: printers,
scanners, cameras, television receivers, modems, robotic arms, small missile launchers to annoy your cubicle
neighbors, and so on. The list is virtually endless, and we cannot discuss every class of device separately here.
But we can still make a few observations:
One commendable trend, for example, is the simplification of connections. While almost every class of
device used to have their own interface (parallel interfaces for printers, serial interfaces for modems,
PS/2 interfaces for keyboards and mice, SCSI for scanners, ), today most devices use USB (universal
serial bus), a relatively foolproof and reasonably fast method which also supports hot-plugging
connections while the computer is running.

Another trend is that towards more intelligence in the peripherals themselves: Formerly, even
expensive printers were fairly stupid devices at an IQ level of electric typewriters, and programmers had
to very carefully send exactly the right control codes to the printer to produce the desired output.
Today, printers (at least good printers) are really computers in their own right supporting their own
programming languages that make printing much less of a hassle for programmers. The same applies in
a similar fashion to many other periperals.

Of course there are still very stupid printers (especially at lower price points) which leave
preparing the output to the computer itself. However, these still make a programmers life
as easy as their more expensive relations.






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Software

Just as important as a computers hardware, i. e., the technical components it consists of6, is its software
the programs it is running. This can very roughly be divided into three categories:
Firmware
The firmware is stored on the computers motherboard and can only be firmware changed or replaced
inconveniently if at all. It is used to put the computer into a defined state after switching it on. Often
there is a way of invoking a setup mode that allows you to set the clock and enable or disable certain
properties of the motherboard.

On PCs, the firmware is called BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) or, on newer
systems, EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface).


Some motherboards include a small Linux system that purportedly boots more quickly
than Linux and which is supposed to be used to surf the Internet or watch a DVD
without having to boot into Windows. Whether this is actually worth the trouble is up
to debate.
Operating system
The operating system makes the computer into a usable device: It manages operating system the
computers resources such as the RAM, the hard disks, the processing time on the CPU(s) available to
individual programs, and the access to other peripherals. It allows starting and stopping programs and
enforces a separation between several users of the computer. Besides, it enableson an elementary
levelthe participation of the computer in a local area network or the Internet. The operating system
frequently furnishes a graphical user interface and thus determines how the computer looks and feels
to its users.
When you buy a new computer it is usually delivered with a pre-installed operating system: PCs with
Microsoft Windows, Macs with OS X, smartphones often with Android (a Linux derivative). The
operating system, though, is not tied as closely to a computer as the firmware, but can in many cases be
replaced by a different onefor example, you can install Linux on most PCs and Macs.

Or you install Linux in addition to an existing operating system usually not a
problem either.





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User-level programs. Applications. Utilities
User-level programs allow you to do something useful, such as write documents, draw or manipulate
pictures, compose music, play games, surf the Internet or develop new software. Such programs are
also called applications. Additionally, there are often utilities that the operating system provides in
order to allow youor a designated system administratorto make changes to the computers
configuration and so on. Servers, in turn, often support software that provides services to other
computers, such as web, mail or database servers.

The Most Important Operating Systems

Windows And OS X
When talking about computer operating systems, most people will automatically think of Microsoft Windows7.
This is due to the fact that nowadays most PCs are sold with Windows preinstalledreally not a bad thing in
itself, since their owners can get them up and running without having to take the trouble to install an operating
system first, but, on the other hand, a problem because it makes life hard for alternative operating sysetms such
as Linux.
In fact it is not at all straightforward to buy a computer without a preinstalled copy of
Windowsfor example, because you want to use it exclusively with Linux, except when
building one from scratch. Theoretically you are supposed to be able to get a refund for an
unused preinstalled copy of Windows from the computers manufacturer, but we know of
nobody who actually managed to obtain any money.
Windows NT
Todays Windows is a descendant of Windows NT, which was Microsofts attempt to establish an operating
system that was up to the standards of the time in the 1990s (earlier versions such as Windows 95 were
graphical extensions to the then-current Microsoft operating system, MS-DOS, and fairly primitive even by the
standards of the day). Decency forbids us a critical appreciation of Windows here; let it suffice to say that it does
approximately what one would expect from an operating system, provides a graphical user interface and
supports most peripheral devices (support for more is provided by the individual device manufacturers).
Mac OS
Apples Macintosh was launched in 1984 and has since been using an oper ating system called Mac OS. Over
the years, Apple made various changes to the platform (todays Macs are technically about the same as
Windows PCs) and operating system, some of them quite radical. Up to and including version 9, MacOS was a



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fairly flimsy artefact which, for example, only provided rudimentary support for running several programs at the
same time. The current Mac OS Xthe X is a Roman 10, not the letter Xis based on an infrastructure
related to BSD Unix and is not unlike Linux in many ways.
Since February, 2012, the official name for the Macintosh operating system is OS X rather
than Mac OS X. If we let slip a Mac OS every so often, you know what we really mean.

Differences
The big difference between Windows and OS X is that OS X is sold exclusively with Apple computers and will not
run on normal PCs. This makes it much more straightforward for Apple to provide a system that is obviously
very homogenous. Windows, on the other hand, must run on all sorts of PCs and support a much wider array of
hardware components that can occur in completely unforeseen combinations. Hence, Windows users have to
contend with incompatibilities that are sometimes difficult or even impossible to sort out. On the other hand,
there is a much greater selection of hardware for Windows-based computers, and prices are, on the whole, less
exorbitant.
Similarities
Windows and OS X are similar in that they are both proprietary software: Users are forced to accept what
Microsoft or Apple put in front of them, and they cannot examine the actual implementation of the system, let
alone make changes to it. They are bound to the upgrade schedule of the system, and if the manufacturer
removes something or replaces it by something else, they need to adapt to that.
There is one difference here, though: Apple is essentially a hardware manufacturer and only
provides OS X to give people an incentive to buy Macs (this is why OS X isnt available for non-
Macs). Microsoft, on the other hand, does not build computers, and instead makes its money
selling software such as Windows which runs on arbitrary PCs. Therefore, an operating system
like Linux is much more of a threat to Microsoft than to Applemost of the people who buy
an Apple computer do this because they want an Apple computer (the complete package), not
because they are especially interested in OS X. The PC as a platform, however, is being
encroached upon by tablets and other new-fangled types of computer that dont run
Windows, and that puts Microsoft under extreme pressure. Apple could easily survive selling
just iPhones and iPads instead of MacsMicrosoft without Windows would probably go
bankrupt fairly soon in spite of having loads of money in their bank account.




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Linux

Linux is an operating system that was first started out of curiosity by Linus Torvalds, but then took on a life of its
ownin the meantime, hundreds of developers (not just students and hobbyists, but also professionals at
companies such as IBM, Red Hat, or Oracle) are developing it further.
Linux was inspired by Unix, an operating system developed in the 1970s at AT&T Bell Laboratories and geared
towards small computers (see above for the meaning of small in this context). Unix soon became the
preferred system for research and technology. For the most part, Linux uses the same concepts and basic ideas
as Unix, and it is easy to get Unix software to run on Linux, but Linux itself does not contain Unix code, but is an
independent project.
Unlike Windows and OS X, Linux isnt backed by an individual company whose economic success hinges on the
success of Linux. Linux is freely available and can be used by anyoneeven commerciallywho subscribes to
the rules of the game (as outlined in the next chapter). This together with the fact that by now Linux no longer
runs just on PCs, but in substantially identical form on platforms ranging from telephones (the most popular
smartphone operating system, Android, is a Linux offshoot) to the largest mainframes (the ten fastest
computers in the world are all running Linux) makes Linux the most versatile operating system in the history of
modern computing.
Distributions
Strictly speaking Linux is just the operating system kernel, i. e., the program that handles the allocation of
resources to applications and utilities. Since an operating system without applications isnt all that useful, one
usually installs a Linux distribution, which is to say a package consisting of Linux proper and a selection of
applications, utilities, documentation and other useful stuff. The nice thing is that, like Linux itself, most Linux
distributions are freely available and hence available free of charge or at very low cost. This makes it possible
to equip a computer with software whose equivalents for Windows or OS X would run into thousands of dollars,
and you do not run the risk of falling foul of licensing restrictions just because you installed your Linux
distribution on all your computers as well as Aunt Millies and those of your buddies Susan and Bob.

More Differences And Similarities
Graphical user interface
Actually, the three big operating systemsLinux, Windows, and OS Xdiffer only in detail in what they present
to the users. All three offer a graphical user interface (GUI) which allows even casual users to manage their files



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through simple gestures like drag and drop. Many popular applications are available for all three operating
systems, so which one you are using at the end of the day becomes almost immaterial as long as you are
spending most of your time inside the web browser, office package, or e-mail program. This is an advantage
because it enables a gradual migration from one system to the other.
Command line
Besides the graphical interface, all three systems also offer a way to use a command line to input textual
commands which the system then executes. With Windows and OS X, this feature is mostly used by system
administrators, while normal users tend to shun ita question of culture. With Linux, on the other hand, the
command line is much less ostracized, which may have to do with its descent from the scientific/technical Unix
philosophy. As a matter of fact, many tasks are performed more conveniently and efficiently from the command
line, especially with the powerful tools that Linux (and really also OS X) provide. As a budding Linux user, you do
well to open up to the command line and learn about its strengths and weaknesses, just as you should learn
about the strengths and weaknesses of the GUI. A combination of both will give you the greatest versatility.