Comparisons of various OS

WINDOWS

Microsoft Windows is the name of several families of software operating systems by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Microsoft Windows eventually came to dominate the world's personal computer market, overtaking Mac OS, which had been introduced previously. At the 2004 IDC Directions conference, IDC Vice President Avneesh Saxena stated that Windows had approximately 90% of the client operating system market.The most recent client version of Windows is Windows Vista. The current server version of Windows is Windows Server 2003. The successor to Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, has been released to manufacturing, but is not yet generally available.

MACINTOSH
Macintosh, or for newer models, Mac, is a brand name which covers several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The original Macintosh was released on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a graphical user interface(GUI) rather than a command line interface.
The idea for a personal computer appropriate for the ordinary consumer dates to the late 1970s and an Apple development team was established in 1979. After the success of the original Macintosh in 1984, the company quickly established market share only to see it dissipate in the 1990s as Microsoft came to monopolize personal computing. Apple consolidated multiple, consumer-level desktop models into the 1998 iMac, which sold extremely well and saw the brand name revitalized. Current Mac systems are mainly targeted at the home, education, and creative professional markets. They are the upgraded iMac and the entry-level Mac mini desktop models, the workstation-level Mac Pro tower, the MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops, and the Xserve server.

LINUX
Linux is one of the most prominent examples of free software and open source development: typically all underlying source code can be freely modified, used, and redistributed by anyone.
Linux is a modular Unix-like operating system. It derives much of its basic design from principles established in Unix during the 1970s and 1980s. Linux uses a monolithic kernel, the Linux kernel, which handles process control, networking, and peripheral and file system access. Device drivers are integrated directly with the kernel. Linux can be controlled by one or more of a text-based command line interface (CLI), graphical user interface (GUI) (usually the default for desktop), or through controls on the device itself (common on embedded machines).


ref- www.wikipedia.org