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What Is A Stand-Alone Operating System?

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Robin Burden Profile
Robin Burden answered
Any program or operating system can be considered 'stand-alone' if it doesn't rely on a library, external module, or another operating system to boot.

What does a stand-alone operating system mean?
The term 'stand-alone operating system' isn't very common any more, because most operating systems are considered stand-alone these days.

However, when Microsoft released early versions of Windows (think 3.1 or 95), the operating system was actually based on MS-DOS (MicroSoft Disk Operating System) running in the background, with the Windows OS working as a sort of user interface.

In this set-up, the Windows OS wouldn't be considered stand-alone, because it required MS DOS to be running before it could be initiated.

The following can all be considered basic criteria for a stand-alone system:

  • Never exits
  • Loading into memory
  • Begins its own execution
  • Never fully hands over execution
The thing to remember is that the term 'stand-alone' is used to describe various different networks, programs and systems - making its actual definition rather ambiguous.
Justin Darkly Profile
Justin Darkly answered
All OS are stand alone.

They work without the help of other OS, so that would make them stand alone. How did whoever used that as a description use it in a sentence. Did they say "This is a stand alone OS"? That doesn't make any sense.

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