Unix Final

We looked at several different operating system specifications trying to determine which OS would be the most versatile for our business environment. It should be taken into strong consideration that although an operating system's documentation will state the minimum system requirements is low, a user may not agree to the level of functionality. In short, the bare requirements are often not acceptable performance to your client. We compared Windows XP Home & Professional, Unix, Linux, Knoppix, Fedora and Macintosh's OS X, to see what requirements were needed to run the operating systems. The importance derived from this research is important in determining the product's hardware lifecycle and expected time before replacing the computer or upgrading he Operating System. Here is what we found.

Starting with Linux. Linux does not support the Intel 286 and earlier processors. However, it fully supports the Intel 80386, 80486, Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, and Pentium III processors. Nevertheless, some users feel that their 80386 Linux systems respond sluggishly, particularly when running X. So, if you want optimum performance, you should install Linux on a PC having an 80486 processor or better.

Linux also supports non-Intel processors such as the Cyrix 6x86 and the AMD K5 and K6. Most Linux users have systems that use Intel chips; if your system uses a non-Intel chip, you may find it more difficult to resolve possible problems.

Your motherboard should include at least 16 MB of RAM for optimum Linux performance. Some users have managed to coax Linux into working on systems with as little as 4 MB of RAM. However, if your system has less than 16 MB of RAM, you probably won't be pleased with its performance. If you plan to run X, you may wish to install more than 16 MB of RAM - perhaps 64 MB. Although X operates well with 16 MB of RAM, you can open more windows and switch between them more quickly if you have additional memory.

Fortunately, Linux is also not too hungry for disk space. To install and use Linux, you should have at least 250 MB of free hard disk space. (The minimum is about 100 MB, but installing Linux on a system with so little disk space will compel you to omit many useful applications and will leave you with little room to work.)

More realistically, if you plan to use your Linux system as a workstation, you should have at least 600 MB of free disk space; if you plan to user your Linux system as a server, you should have at least 1.6 GB (1,600 MB) of free disk space.

After looking at the very slim Linux, we wanted to compare the specs to the larger Windows XP Home. XP Home requires a PC with 300 megahertz or higher processor clock speed recommended; 233 MHz minimum required (single or dual processor system). Intel Pentium/Celeron family, or AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor is recommended. Also, Microsoft reccomends128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher. But they declare it will be functional with only 64 MB of RAM, but it may limit performance and some features. As far as Hard Drive space is concerned, XP demands a very large footprint of 1.5 gigabytes of space. And to install this product you will need a CD-ROM or DVD drive.

As you can imagine, XP Professional does require a bit more resources due to the more services and available features. XP Pro system based on an IA-32 processor (minimum 450 MHz Intel Pentium® II processor or greater - Intel Pentium® 4 or Pentium® D or Xeon™ processor recommended), or a system based on an Intel processor with Intel® EM64T, or a system based on an AMD Athlon* or AMD Opteron* processor.128 MB of RAM (256 MB recommended). XP Pro needs100 MB of disk space, plus an additional 200 MB during installation for the download and temporary files. What amazed us however was how these specifications compared to Macintosh's OS X.

Now that the primarily Windows product has been examined, let's take a look at the leading rival - OS X. Macintosh's newly released OS X Version 10.4 requires a Macintosh computer, not PC, with at least a PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor. The PowerPC G3 processor will be at least 500MHz. The system needs to have at least 256MB of physical RAM to run all of the services and programs. This is double the amount Macintosh suggested for its prior 10.3.8 client. However, the main departure and big surprise is Macintosh's requirement to have at least 3.0 GB of available space