Software
Operating systems for the Web
Multics, Unix, OS/360, Pick, George3, RSTSE, RT-11, RSX-11M, CP/M, MP/M, PC-DOS, Macintosh, OS/2, Windows, OS X, Linux, Beos.
That's a very short list of operating systems past and current for mainframes, minicomputers, early PCs, later PCs, network servers, clusters and PDAs. So what's left to stick an operating system on?
How about the Web? The idea of a Web operating system has been bandied about for some time, and a few systems are appearing.
The central idea of a Web operating system is to provide a desktop (or Webtop) in a Web browser that is similar in function to a PC desktop. To be an operating system, it needs to have applications (or Weblications, as they have been called) along with management tools.
Exactly what constitutes a Web operating system is debatable, but in general at the client end a Web browser is responsible for rendering the user interface and handling user interaction as well as performing some or all of the processing.
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