It's really easy for us to think that there's only three operating systems out there.
There's Microsoft Windows there's the Mac OS and then there's Linux but in reality there's a lot more
than that.
And in this episode what I want to concentrate on is the concept of what I'm calling secure OS types.
Now before we dive into this too much what I want to make sure you understand is that these different
types I'm about to tell you this isn't some official law or list.
This is just compt his opinion in fact what they're doing is they're giving you examples of different
situations with operating systems that they're probably going to be asking questions on.
So while I'll say that there is server OS and workstation OS a kiosk so as we'll talk about Isle's at
the moment the reality is that these are not laws of physics either simply cop to his opinions on things.
So let's go through these different types of secure OS is now first of all to me all o s's are for the
most part secure.
What we're talking about here is what type of operating system do I use in a particular situation.
Now the other thing I want to mention real quick is that in this list come to mention something very
strange.
They say a network secure operating system.
There's no such thing.
The last time we had something like that was in the early 90s when we had stuff with names like Netware
and Banyan Vines.
So I'm going to skip that particular one hope that I'm right.
Let me know on the test.
OK.
So let's go and get started.
The first one I want to talk about is a server operating system a server operating system is going to
be an operating system version that's designed to support servers.
Now you can take pretty much any operating system and put a web server on it.
But what we're talking about custom designed server operating systems we're talking about for example
the famous Windows server which has extra functionality built in built in DNS built in DHC the much
stronger hardware support it can support more C-p use it has built in raid support for lots and lots
of hard drives.
Windows Server can support lots more instantaneous connections so you can have more than 20 which is
a big deal for servers.
So there's a lot of features like that that come into play.
Certainly Windows doesn't have a lock on this.
Even Linux pretty much every distribution has Serba versions.
And again there are customized to work with stronger more robust hardware.
They're designed to be able to support lots of lots of different server applications and they often
skip a lot of things that you would see in other ones you're not going to see very many games in a Redhat
Linux Enterprise Edition server because servers don't play games.
After that is workstations now Conti's the workstation.
But to me this is going to be the desktop version of things.
So Windows 10 or Mac OS or Ubuntu Linux desktop these are designed to be the workhorse systems are going
to have good network functionality.
They're going to have reasonably good support for hardware but like for example Windows 10 out of the
box does not support full blown raid.
So little things like that that can make a difference.
After that are going to be what I'm going to call embedded systems.
I'm talking about everything from routers to refrigerators to cameras.
These are individual devices that you don't really you can't add to it.
Not really.
You almost never have a dedicated screen a keyboard or a mouse or anything like that.
But they are full blown computers and they are running operating systems these operating systems can
vary dramatically for example on my little cameras that I use for security at the house.
They're basically just running a very slim down version of Linux.
If you're using a Cisco router then you'll be running the famous Cisco IOS and even things like embedded
systems for plant processing.
Use a very popular but not really well known operating system called VX works.
So all of these different devices also come with their own operating systems.
And for the test that the term appliance because that's what we see on the company objectives.
Now after that is a kiosk and we've all been to a kiosk at a I was just at the Museum of Natural Science
here in Houston in the big oil exhibit that they've opened up and it's got kiosks all over the place.
A kiosk is going to manifest as little more than some big screen usually a touch screen with very customized
interfaces to show people different things so I was able to move.
Plate Tectonics just by pressing buttons at this kiosk kiosk operating systems for the most part are
almost always going to be slimmed down versions of Linux.
There are a few dedicated kiosk operating systems but to be honest the free price that Linux comes along
with makes it very very attractive for people to use those types of things.
He also sometimes will see things like the X works used within a kiosk.
The most important thing is when you're at a kiosk you don't really know that you're at a computer it's
just a big screen then you press buttons and you do fun stuff.
Last are going to be the mobile operating systems and that really boils down to one of two camps.
Either the Apple iOS or Google Android.
I'm an android guy and don't try to change these types of mobile operating systems are custom designed
for smart devices in particular phones and tablets.
They provide very very robust experience they provide strong interfacing and a level of security that
we never saw until Apple came out with iOS and then much not much later we came out with the Google
Android.
The level of security you have with those compared to say Windows 10 is absolutely dramatic.
Now what you need to be thinking about at this point is when am I going to use these different operating
systems.
Well it's easy to go well I've had a kiosk so I'm going to use slimmed down version of Linux but what's
more important is you think in terms of two big things.
Number one least functionality whatever scenario they throw at you in the exam.
Think about which one of these operating systems has the least amount of functionality but enough to
do the job that it needs to do.
Second are secure configurations any operating system by default has a high degree of security in it.
In today's society you don't have a choice but you can actually have operating systems that are set
up to be a lot more secure.
For example Windows 10 is famous for its phone home telemetry.
Anytime you type net stat you see all these little calls that Windows 10 is making back to Microsoft.
But you can get operating systems that are much more locked down.
There's a secure version of Windows.
There's a secure many secure versions of Linux and even a Mac.
Those are listed as a group known as trusted operating systems trusted operating system is from the
secure computing group.
They're the same people who work with things like TPM technology for securing hard drives and such and
they certify usually for large governments trusted operating systems that are locked down as much as
we possibly can.