What is the difference between DOS and Windows environment?

Answer 1

In the DOS environment, all your commands are entered from a prompt, perhaps looking something like this ">C:".

In the Windows environment, all your commands are initiated from an icon instead of having to remember what they were as was the case with DOS.

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DOS (disk operating system) preceded Microsoft's Windows OS. DOS was originally developed for mainframes in the late 1950s and was a keyboard or punch-card command driven OS. Operators were essential to running the systems. They entered in start, batch, check-point, cancel and print commands. In the late 1970s people at MIT and Stanford began adapting a simple DOS to the newly invented microprocessors and for about 10 years DOS was the king of "early PCs." The early Apple-I computer ran DOS on a proprietary Motorola chip set.

Then Microsoft moved away from DOS toward a graphical user interface like the one Apple had created for its Macintosh line of personal systems. So keyboard commands were replaced with point-and-click (mouse) mechanisms to initiate computer functions. Click on a desktop folder icon to show file management information instead of DIR *.exe in DOS. Click on MediaPlayer to play MP3 audio instead of RUN ZOOMER C:\music\ FLIGHT.mp3 and so forth.

As great as the divide from DOS to Windows, the divide from Windows to the NOS (next OS) is far beyond the much praised Linux OS; it will include international verbal commands, 3D monitors, pre-emptive error elimination, universal self-interfacing to any connected devices, total immunity from intentional network attacks and run on hyper-speed devices as small as cell phones, yet 1000 times more powerful by 2010.

1. DOS uses CLI (command line interface), whereas Windows used GUI (graphical user interface)..
2. DOS does not support networking, Windows does..
3. DOS is a single user OS, Windows is Multiuser..
4. DOS is a single tasking OS, Windows is Multitasking..
5. Dos is a single threading OS, Windows is a Multithreading..
6. DOS supports 2 GB of maximum partition size, Windows supports 2 TB or more..
7. DOS uses FAT 16 file system, Windows uses FAT 32..
8. Server administration is not possible in DOS..