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definitions again (Developers)

posted by samwdpckr, 19.03.2024, 13:15

DOS is a "disk operating system". It is an operating system that does the basic I/O functions so that the programs don't need to do those themselves. DOS handles the filesystems and console I/O without restricting what the programs themselves can do.

Most DOS operating systems on x86 have the same standardized ABI as DR-DOS, MS-DOS, FreeDOS and others.

Amiga also has a DOS kernel on its ROM. It does the same things but of course it is not compatible with any DOS on x86. The CPU instruction set is also different.

Unix is the original definition of POSIX. Other POSIX-compliant operating systems are Unix clones. Modern POSIX does a lot more than DOS. POSIX operating systems are (usually) multitasking and they have a standardized API, but no standardized ABI.

API means Application Programming Interface. It is the higher-level "human-readable" interface that is used in calling conventions of C library functions.

ABI means Application Binary Interface. It is the low-level interface that is used by the compiled programs to make syscalls to the kernel.

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