ICT BTEC level 3, by Edexcel. Unit 2 P2

1. P2
Thethreemainfamiliesof operating systemsare: Windows,OSX(Mac OS),and
Linux.
CLI differs from GUI, CLI stands for command lineinterface.An example of this is usingthe command prompt
in Windows.CLI is usingdifferent commands to access functions of the computer, whereas GUI (Graphical
User Interface), is designed to be user friendly.The GUI is the desktop OS. It is the interactivesystem that you
use to access programs with a graphical output.
An Operatingsystem is what provides a user interface, a GUI. It acts as a way to communicate with the
computer hardware. An OperatingSystem manages the computer hardwareand software; it acts as a medium
for the software to interact with the hardware.
Without an OS, each piece of software would need to be individually programmed for a specific configuration
of hardware, justto interactwith it. Instead the software is programmed to the OS, and the OS is programmed
to an all manner of hardware(resources: CPU, GPU, HDD, ram, etc.)
Linux OS or the Linux kernel is an open sourcepiece of software, itallows peopleto create their own versions
of the Linux operatingsystem, and some common examples are: Linux Mint, Ubuntu, and Linpus.
The Linux OS is based similarly to UNIX, which is common with universities, itwas originally a CLI based OS, but
was later given a GUI OS version.
Because of Linux’s diversity,different OS’s based off of the Linux code can look very different. UsingMint and
Ubuntu as examples,they showsimilarities compared to modern OS’s,but they do look aesthetically different.
Figure 1: Linux Mint

2. P2
Figure 2: Ubuntu OS