Operating System Flashcards
What is an Operating System?
It is software that allows the user to interact with the computer hardware. It also allows the computer programs to be run on the system and manages the resources of the system.
Purpose of the Operating Systems
To provide the user a platform to execute computer programs in an efficient and convenient manner.
Operating System Functions
There are eight (8) major system componenets of the operating system.
1. Process Management - The OS decides the order in which processes have access to the processor, and how much processing time each process has.
2. Main-memory Managment -the OS keeps track of where the memory is, decides which process are loaded into memory and allocates and deallocates necessary memory space
3. File Managment - The OS carries out the following file management activities. It keeps track of where information is stored, user access settings and status of every file etc.
4.I/O Management - The OS has protocols for each interface of the I/O devices. It manages the communication between applications and the interfaces provided by device drivers.
5. Secondary-Storage Management - The OS contains several systems of storage: primary, secondary and cache.
6. Networking - The OS considers rerouting and connecting the strategies and uses resources contenting for security purposes.
7. Protection System (Security) - OS that have multiple users would have multiple concurrent processes running and these processes differ from each uses and should not interfere with each other. User progams and files should be protected.
8. Command Interpreter - Is the interface of the OS for the user. The user commands are translated into user calls to be executed on the system
