Essentially, we subdivide interesting software in two big groups.

In so-called "operating-systems" and "user software".

The most known are the Windows family like Windows 95, Windows XP or Windows Vista or the  big group of Linux operating systems, par example Mandravia, Suse, Red Hut or Ubuntu.

We will not make a complete comparison of this different systems, we will only motivate you to think about that.

The decision for or against a specific operating system is usually not your one decision. The newest windows is mostly installed.

 There are a few reasons to think carefully about that. The price for a notebook with installed Windows is 575.-- EUR, the notebook with FreeDOS is 439.-- EUR. A modern Linux system, you can download it from the Internet or you can buy a magazine with a Linux distribution. Now you have with some effort a modern computer, but that's not all.