Introduction of Operating System || Operating System || Bcis Notes

introduction of Operating System

Introduction of Operating System

Introduction to operating system is a program that acts as an interface between the user and the computer hardware and controls the program execution.

  • An operating system (OS) is a collection of software that manages computer hardware resources and provides common services for computer programs.
  • The operating system is a vital component of the system software in a computer system.

An operating system falls under the category of system software that performs all the fundamental tasks like file management, memory handling, process management, handling the input/output and governing and managing the peripheral devices like disk drives, networking hardware, printers, etc.

Introduction and History of Operating System || Operating System || Bcis Notes

Fig: Operating System
Some examples of OS are Linux, Windows, OS X, Solaris, OS/400, Chrome OS, etc.

Objective/Goals of OS:

An Operating System has a special program that controls the execution of application programs. OS acts as an intermediary among applications and the hardware components. OS can be thought of as having three objectives. These are:

  1. Convenience: It makes a computer more suitable to use.
  2. Efficiency: It provides the computer system resources with efficiency and in easy to use format.
  3. Ability to develop: It should be built in such a way that it permits the efficient development, testing and installation of new system functions without interfering with service.

OS as an extended machine:

  • Operating systems perform two basically unrelated functions: providing a clean abstract set of resources instead of the messy hardware to application programmers and managing these hardware resources.
  • The architecture (instruction set, memory, I/O, and bus structure) of most computers at the machine level language is primitive and awkward to program, especially for input/output operations.
  • Users do not want to be involved in the programming of storage devices.
  • Operating System provides a simple, high-level abstraction such that these devices contain a collection of named files.
  • Such files consist of useful pieces of information like a digital photo, email messages, or web page.
  • Operating System provides a set of basic commands or instructions to perform various operations such as read, write, modify, save or close.
  • Dealing with them is easier than directly dealing with hardware.

Thus, the Operating System hides the complexity of hardware and presents a beautiful interface to the users. Just as the operating system shields (protect from an unpleasant experience) the programmer from the disk hardware and presents a simple file-oriented interface, it also conceals a lot of unpleasant business concerning interrupts, timers, memory management, and other low-level features. In each case, the abstraction offered by the operating system is simpler and easier to use than that offered by the underlying hardware. In this view, the function of the operating system is to present the user with the equivalent of an extended machine or virtual machine that is easier to work with than the underlying hardware.

OS as a Resource Manager:

  • The concept of an operating system as providing abstractions to application programs is a top-down view. Alternatively, the bottom-up view holds that the OS is there to manage all pieces of a complex system. Also, a computer consists of a set of resources such as processors, memories, timers, disks, printers and many others.
  • The Operating System manages these resources and allocates them to specific programs.
  • As a resource manager, the Operating system provides the controlled allocation of the processors, memories, I/O devices among various programs. Moreover, multiple user programs are running at the same time. The processor itself is a resource and the Operating System decides how much processor time should be given for the execution of a particular user program.

The operating system also manages memory and I/O devices when multiple users are working. The primary task of OS is to keep the track of which programs are using which resources, to grant resource requests, to account for usage, and to resolve conflicting requests from different programs and users. Also, Resource management includes multiplexing (sharing) resources in two ways: in time and in space.

You may also like: History of Operating Systems 

 

 

1 Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*