OS Versions
Understand the major operating system families including Windows, Linux, and macOS. Learn about backward compatibility challenges that impact software development and how OS design decisions influence hardware support and developer tools. Discover how popular applications shape OS success and user adoption.
Families of OSes
There are three OS families that dominate the market today:
- Windows
- Linux
- macOS
The term family means several OS versions that follow the same architectural solutions. Therefore, most functions in these versions are implemented in the same manner.
Backward compatibility problem
The developers of an OS family follow the same architecture. They do not offer something fundamentally new in the latest versions of their product.
This is because changes in modern OSs happen gradually and slowly. The reason for this is a backward compatibility problem. This compatibility means that newer OS versions provide the features of older versions. Most existing programs require these features for their work. We can view backward compatibility as an optional requirement, but it’s a severe limitation for software development. Let’s find out why that ...