confusion in defining my Linux operating system?

Upendra Pratap Singh · 09-05-2015, 12:09 PM

I am always confused with the following terms and their meanings pertaining to Linux operating system:

time shared systems
multi-programming system
multi-user system
multi-tasking system

What is the dividing line between their meaning?

Can you explain with some sort of analogy?
I always get these terms wrong.

John VV · 09-05-2015, 12:25 PM

what research have you done
the terms are fairly strait forward and self explanatory

and this dose sound like a slightly reworded " homework " question
and this post also sounds like homework
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...3/#post5416307

Upendra Pratap Singh · 09-05-2015, 12:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John VV

what research have you done
the terms are fairly strait forward and self explanatory

and this dose sound like a slightly reworded " homework " question
and this post also sounds like homework
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...3/#post5416307

I find any two terms to be somehow related to each other as if one is an extension of another. This is what confuses me.

John VV · 09-05-2015, 03:35 PM

"time shared systems"

think of a 1960's and 70's mainframe

" multi-programming system"

something besides a mainframe that can run programs in different languages

" multi-user system"

a operating system NEWER than 1960's

"multi-tasking system"

can run more than one program at a time -- computer newer than the 1960's

273 · 09-06-2015, 08:03 AM

A system can and will be described by more than one of those terms -- you couldn't have a multi-user system without multitasking, for example.
This looks like a homework question from the late 1980s and I would be disturbed if I were on a course asking something like this.