Tuesday, November 6, 2012

GSLC Assignment part 2

1. a. Seagate Technology
Founded in 1979, Seagate is the leading provider of hard drives and storage solutions. From the videos, music and documents that we share with friends and family on social networks, to servers that form the backbone of enterprise data centre and cloud-based computing, to desktop and notebook computers that fuel our personal productivity, Seagate products help more people to store, share and protect their valuable digital content. Seagate offers the industry’s broadest portfolio of hard disc drives, solid state drives and solid state hybrid drives. In addition, the Company offers an extensive line of retail storage products for consumers and small businesses, along with data recovery services for any brand of hard drive and digital media type. Seagate employs more than 50,000 people around the world.

b.     SanDisk Corporation
SanDisk, a Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies, is a global leader in flash memory storage solutions. Our products enable you to capture, share, preserve, and enjoy a growing world of digital content. With removable memory cards in cameras, embedded memory in smart phones, powerful memory solutions in cloud storage data centers, and more, SanDisk powers your smart digital lifestyle. This is a goal and a tradition we have upheld for nearly 25 years, as we have grown from a three-person Silicon Valley startup to a global leader with more than 4,000 employees. Today, the SanDisk brand is recognized around the world, and our pioneering flash memory technology is integrated into products from top electronics companies and sold at approximately 250,000 international retail outlets. SanDisk creates transformational memory products at world-class manufacturing facilities that produce more than two million products each day. We serve three high-growth mega markets--mobile, computing, and consumer electronics--each of which increasingly requires flash memory to deliver compelling benefits to consumers and businesses.

c.      Samsung Storage devices
Samsung’s storage devices span the spectrum of solutions for saving your data, images, audio, and video files. We have a broad line of energy saving Hard Disk Drives, fast and efficient Optical Disc Drives, and leading-edge Solid State Drives ready for your application. Our drives support OEMs and consumers in desktop/notebook PCs, consumer electronics, enterprise storage and more. For over 70 years, Samsung has been dedicated to making a better world through diverse businesses that today span advance technology, semiconductors, skyscraper, and plant construction, petrochemicals, fashion, medicine, finance, hotels, and more.

d.     Hitachi
The expectation for IT in the past has been its use to boost productivity through the regular processing of data collected for a particular purpose. Recent years, however, have seen explosive growth in the quantity of unstructured content data, such as e-mail and images, and data collected from sensors and other sources. Called “Big Data,” the challenge for IT in the future is to generate new value from this huge volume of information. Through the supply of its data analytics meister services, storage solutions, cloud services, and other services that suit the needs of our time, Hitachi aims to work collaboratively with customers to bring about future innovation. The data analytics meister service draws on extensive data analysis know-how as well as Hitachi’s IT platform technologies and products to support the generation of new business value from Big Data. Storage solutions, meanwhile, are essential for the secure access and management of large quantities of data. Hitachi operates these businesses globally, based around its storage business that boasts one of the largest shares of the international market. As the demands of the world grow in step with the rapid advance of information technology, strong growth is also anticipated in emerging economies’ market. Hitachi also supplies mission-critical applications for core corporate systems and highly reliable cloud services for social infrastructure systems. Elsewhere, Hitachi’s consulting business combines IT products and services with extensive application know-how. Hitachi is seeking to strengthen its capabilities for serving customers by building a global consulting network that includes operations in countries such as China and India. In this way, Hitachi is drawing on the strengths of IT to contribute to innovation in customers’ businesses and in society.

2.      a. Linux
Uses:As well as those designed for general purpose use on desktops and servers, distributions may be specialized for different purposes including: computer architecture support, embedded systems, stability, security, localization to a specific region or language, targeting of specific user groups, support for real-time applications, or commitment to a given desktop environment. Furthermore, some distributions deliberately include only free software. Currently, over three hundred distributions are actively developed, with about a dozen distributions being most popular for general-purpose use. Linux is a widely ported operating system kernel. The Linux kernel runs on a highly diverse range of computer architectures: in the hand-held ARM-based iPAQ and the mainframe IBM System z9, System z10; in devices ranging from mobile phones to supercomputers. Specialized distributions exist for less mainstream architectures. The ELKS kernel fork can run on Intel 8086 or Intel 80286 16-bit microprocessors, while the µClinux kernel fork may run on systems without a memory management unit. The kernel also runs on architectures that were only ever intended to use a manufacturer-created operating system, such as Macintosh computers (with both PowerPC and Intel processors), PDAs, video game consoles, portable music players, and mobile phones. See List of Linux supported architectures. There are several industry associations and hardware conferences devoted to maintaining and improving support for diverse hardware under Linux, such as FreedomHEC.
Desktop :The popularity of Linux on standard desktop computers and laptops has been increasing over the years. Currently most distributions include a graphical user environment, with the two most popular environments being GNOME (which can utilize additional shells such as the default GNOME Shell and Ubuntu Unity), and the KDE Plasma Desktop. The performance of Linux on the desktop has been a controversial topic; for example in 2007 Con Kolivas accused the Linux community of favoring performance on servers. He quit Linux kernel development because he was frustrated with this lack of focus on the desktop, and then gave a "tell all" interview on the topic. Since then a significant amount of development has been undertaken in an effort to improve the desktop experience. Projects such as Upstart and system aim for a faster boot time. Many popular applications are available for a wide variety of operating systems. For example Mozilla Firefox, OpenOffice.org/ Libre Office and Blender have downloadable versions for all major operating systems. Furthermore, some applications were initially developed for Linux, such as Pidgin, and GIMP, and were ported to other operating systems including Windows and Mac OS X due to their popularity. In addition, a growing number of proprietary desktop applications are also supported on Linux; see List of proprietary software for Linux. In the field of animation and visual effects, most high end software, such asAutodesk Maya, Softimage XSI and Apple Shake, is available for Linux, Windows and/or Mac OS X. There are also several companies that have ported their own or other companies' games to Linux. Many types of applications available for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X are also available for Linux. Commonly, either a free software application will exist which does the functions of an application found on another operating system, or that application will have a version that works on Linux, such as with Skype and some video games. Furthermore, the Wine project provides a Windows compatibility layer to run unmodified Windows applications on Linux. CrossOver is a proprietary solution based on the open source Wine project that supports running Windows versions of Microsoft Office, Intuit applications such as Quicken and QuickBooks, Adobe Photoshop versions through CS2, and many popular games such as World of Warcraft and Team Fortress 2. In other cases, where there is no Linux port of some software in areas such as desktop publishing and professional audio, there is equivalent software available on Linux. The collaborative nature of free software development allows distributed teams to perform language localization of some Linux distributions for use in locales where localizing proprietary systems would not be cost-effective. For example the Sinhalese language version of the Knoppix distribution was available significantly before Microsoft Windows XP was translated to Sinhalese. In this case the Lanka Linux User Group played a major part in developing the localized system by combining the knowledge of university professors, linguists, and local developers. Installing, updating and removing software in Linux is typically done through the use of package managers such as the Synaptic Package Manager, PackageKit, and Yum Extender. While most major Linux distributions have extensive repositories, often containing tens of thousands of packages, not all the software that can run on Linux is available from the official repositories. Alternatively, users can install packages from unofficial repositories, download pre-compiled packages directly from websites, or compile the source code by themselves. All these methods come with different degrees of difficulty; compiling the source code is in general considered a challenging process for new Linux users, but it is hardly needed in modern distributions and is not a method specific to Linux.
Servers designed for LinuxLinux distributions have long been used as server operating systems, and have risen to prominence in that area; Netcraft reported in September 2006 that eight of the ten most reliable internet hosting companies ran Linux distributions on their web servers. Since June 2008, Linux distributions represented five of the top ten,FreeBSD three of ten, and Microsoft two of ten; since February 2010, Linux distributions represented six of the top ten, FreeBSD two of ten, and Microsoft one of ten. Linux distributions are the cornerstone of the LAMP server-software combination (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Python) which has achieved popularity among developers, and which is one of the more common platforms for website hosting. Linux distributions have become increasingly popular on mainframes in the last decade partly due to pricing and the open-source model. In December 2009, computer giant IBM reported that it would predominantly market and sell mainframe-based Enterprise Linux Server. Linux distributions are also commonly used as operating systems for supercomputers: since November 2010, out of the top 500 systems, 459 (91.8%) run a Linux distribution. Linux was also selected as the operating system for the world's most powerful supercomputer, IBM's Sequoia which was scheduled to become operational in 2011.
Embedded devices Due to its low cost and ease of customization, Linux is often used in embedded systems. Android—based on a modified version of the Linux kernel—has become a major competitor of Nokia's older Symbian OS, found in many smartphones. During the third quarter of 2010, 25.5% of smartphones sold worldwide used Android (with all Linux variants forming 27.6% of the total during that time).Cell phones and PDAs running Linux on open-source platforms became more common from 2007; examples include the Nokia N810, Openmoko's Neo1973, and the Motorola ROKR E8. Continuing the trend, Palm (later acquired by HP) produced a new Linux-derived operating system, webOS, which is built into its new line of Palm Pre smartphones. The popular TiVo digital video recorder also uses a customized Linux, as do several network firewalls and routers from such makers as Cisco/Linksys. The Korg OASYS, the Korg KRONOS, the Yamaha Yamaha Motif XS/Motif XF music workstationsYamaha S90XS/S70XS, Yamaha MOX6/MOX8 synthesizers, Yamaha Motif-Rack XS tone generator module, and Roland RD-700GX digital piano also run Linux. Linux is also used in stage lighting control systems, such as the WholeHogIII console.
b. Windows
Desktop : There is little openly published information on the usage share of desktop and laptop computers. Gartner publishes estimates, but the way the estimates are calculated is not openly published. Also, sales may overstate usage. Most computers are sold with a pre-installed OS; some users replace that OS with a different one due to personal preference. Conversely, sales underestimate usage, by not counting pirated copies. For example, in 2009, "U.S. research firm IDC estimated that 80% of software sold in China last year was pirated." (Windows was mentioned, but no specific estimate for Windows was given.). As another example, in 2007, the automated push of IE7 update onto legal copies of Windows, contrasted with web browser share statistics, led one author to "estimate that 25%–35% of all Windows XP machines are illegal".
Mobile : Mobile operating systems that can be found on smartphones include Nokia's Symbian, Apple's iOS, Research in Motion's BlackBerry OS, Microsoft's Windows Mobile and its successor Windows Phone 7, Google's Android, Samsung's Bada, and HP's webOS. Android and webOS are in turn built on top of Linux, and iOS is derived from OS X which in turn is built upon the BSD and NeXTSTEP operating systems. Linux, BSD, and NeXTSTEP are all related to UnixGartner's Q3 2011 unit numbers total 115 million with Google's Android shipping on 60 million smartphones, Nokia's Symbian on 19 million and Apple's iOS on 17 million. Canalys' Q2 2011 unit numbers total 108 million with Google's Android shipping on 52 million smartphones, Apple's iOS on 20 million, and Nokia's Symbian on < 20 million. Nokia confirms its Q2 smartphone sales were 16.7 million units.
Server: Server market share can be measured with statistical surveys of publicly accessible servers, such as web servers, mail servers or DNS servers on the Internet: the operating system powering such servers is found by inspecting raw response messages. This method gives insight only into market share of operating systems that are publicly accessible on the Internet. There will be differences in the result depending on how the sample is done and observations weighted. Usually the surveys are not based on a random sample of all ip numbers, domain names, hosts or organisations, but on servers found by some other method. Additionally many domains and ip numbers may be served by one host and some domains may be served by several hosts or by one host with several ip numbers.

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