Operating System meaning and definition...
In simple words Operating systems are software's which help user's to interact with a machine . For a normal user a computer without operating system is just a useless machine. Operating systems are not only used in computers but it's installed in almost all user friendly machines operated by humans like mobile phones, robots etc. Now when we consider the computer systems the purpose of operating systems is not only to provide a convenient user interface but also to organize the hardware and software installed in the machine.
Types of Operating System
Real-time A real-time operating system is a multitasking operating system that aims at executing real-time applications. Real-time operating systems often use specialized scheduling algorithms.
Multi-user vs. Single-user A multi-user operating system allows multiple users to access a computer system concurrently. Time-sharing system can be classified as multi-user systems as they enable a mu Multi-tasking vs. Single-tasking When a single program is allowed to run at a time, the system is grouped under a single-tasking system.
Distributed A distributed operating system manages a group of independent computers and makes them appear to be a single computer. The development of networked computers that could be linked.
Embedded Embedded operating systems are designed to be used in embedded computer systems. They are designed to operate on small machines like PDAs with less autonomy.
Chrome OS - Chrome OS is the new operating system developed by Google and it cannot be added in any of the classification listed above. It's not actually an operating system but its a web browser.
History of operating systems
In the 1940s, the earliest electronic digital systems had no operating systems. Electronic systems of this time were so primitive compared to those of today that instructions were often entered into the system one bit at a time on rows of mechanical switches or by jumper wires on plug boards. These were special-purpose systems that, for example, generated ballistics tables for the military or controlled the printing of payroll checks from data on punched paper cards. After programmable general purpose computers were invented, machine languages (consisting of strings of the binary digits 0 and 1 on punched paper tape) were introduced that sped up the programming process (Stern, 1981).
Working Of Operating System
Description of Diagram
Consider the figure; here the user gives instruction through software. Software passes instruction to operating system and OS to hardware. The return path is from hardware to OS and then from OS to software (result). For example you click on the 'X' button to close Windows media player. Then the instruction to that software is passed to Windows operating system and then to the CPU. The CPU executes it and the result you see on desktop is closing of Windows media player.
5 Functions of Operating System
1) Provide user interface - As said earlier without a proper user interface its difficult to manage a machine. It is possible to interact with a machine using the commands, but it's easy to learn all
2) Input/output management - We can add additional hardware's to a computer and configure them easily with the help of an operating system. Printer, external hard disk, scanner, USB drives are some of
3) Memory and CPU management - Operating system allocates the memory and other resources for the other programs in a computer. The memory allocation and CPU usage of each program is controlled by OS a
4) Multitasking - Multitasking is another feature of operating systems (not in DOS). We can do more than one tasks at the same time in an operating system. For example you can listen to music in media
5) Networking - Its easy to do networking with the help of operating systems. You can share files, folders or even hardware resources like printer through a network with the help of operating systems.
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