Operating Systems

Question 1

What are the functions of an operating system?

Answer 1

• Providing User Interface
• Memory Management
• Interrupt Service Routines
• Processor Scheduling
• Backing store management
• Input and Output Management

Question 2

What are the types of memory management?

Answer 2

Paging: Available memory is divided into fixing size pages, process in memory can be held in non-contigous pages, mapped to logical by a page table
Segmentation: Divides address space logically into segments of varying length

Question 3

What is virtual memory?

Answer 3

A technique that uses a portion of the computer’s hard disk as an extension of RAM - swaps files in and out of RAM by a process called disk thrashing

Question 4

What is a distributed operating system?

Answer 4

Form of parallel processing system which splits tasks over multiple computers - OS coordinates so that the system appears to the user as a single system

Question 5

What is multitasking operating system?

Answer 5

An OS that allows each user to run more than one job at a time

Question 6

What is a multi-user operating system?

Answer 6

Allows multiple users to use a computer system by allocating each one a slice of processor time - using a scheduling algorithm