BlackBerry 10 OS compared with Microsoft Windows

BlackBerry 10 OS and Windows have different architectures, but the main difference between them from a user's perspective is how you invoke programs.

Much of what you do via a GUI in Windows you do in BlackBerry 10 OS through command-line utilities, configuration files, and scripts, although BlackBerry 10 OS does support a powerful Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to help you create, test, and debug software and embedded systems.

Here are some other differences:

• BlackBerry 10 OS and DOS use different end-of-line characters; BlackBerry 10 OS uses a linefeed, while DOS uses a carriage return and a linefeed. If you need to transfer text files from one OS to the other, you can use BlackBerry 10 OS's textto utility to convert the files. For example, to convert the end-of-line characters to BlackBerry 10 OS-style:

  textto -l my_file

  To convert the end-of-line characters to DOS-style:

  textto -c my_file

• BlackBerry 10 OS uses a slash (/) instead of a backslash (\) to separate components of a pathname.
• You can't use DOS commands in BlackBerry 10 OS, but many have equivalent commands. For more information, see BlackBerry 10 OS for MS-DOS users.