"Unix is basically a simple and powerful Operating System, but you have to be a genius to understand its simplicity." - Dennis Ritchie
The title says it all. OS is what we see/hear/use everyday on our computer. It's definitely a big part of our lives, so this seminar is sure to be informative and interesting.
The first slide really caught my attention. The number of people playing World of Warcraft in the world is amazing, I being one of the 8 million. Then, when Dr Soo said that there were 800 million worldwide using Windows, I was once again astonished. He went on to introducing us to 4 of the many OS-es out there. They were Mac OS X, Windows 7, Ubuntu and OpenSolaris. We were then given various day-to-day tasks to do on the 4 laptops that were loaded with the different OSes. These tasks are what a casual user may do with a computer - writing a word document, playing mp3/video, editing a picture, downloading programs, logging on to facebook etc.
Spending just 15 minutes on each OS, we tried to rush through the various tasks at hand. The easiest for me was on the Windows 7 machine. I have been using the Windows OS for a long time now and hence I am quite familiar with it. Second was the Mac OS X. The hardest 2 were the OpenSolaris and the Ubuntu. That was the first time I was using the 2 open source OSes. Given only 15 minutes to play around with it, I am in no position to say that they're lousier than the Windows or the OS X. As time comes, I may try to get myself a copy of these 2 OSes and experiment around. Who knows, I might convert to Ubuntu fan one day.
During the last part of the seminar, each of the seniors presented the OS they were "rooting for". I was hoping for a little more flame war to go on between the different OSes but it was quite tame. It was informative and entertaining.
On a closing note, Dr Soo said that understanding an OS is different from using an OS. So I'm definitely looking forward to next week's seminar!
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