Operating System Overview
Operating system is basically a program which is used to manage the computer hardware.it behaves as a midway between computer hardware and computer user and also provides basis for application programs. Main objective of operating system is to provide a well-organized and convenient environment for user in which they can execute the programs. Because of its complexity and massiveness, it must be created piece vise. Each and every piece of this program should be a well-defined part of the system with carefully defined input, output and functions. Operating systems has some amazing aspects about how varied they are in accomplishing these tasks.
|
Operating system |
Purpose |
| Mainframe OS | Optimize hardware utilization |
| Personal computer OS | Complex games and business applications and everything in-between. |
| OS for handheld computer | Easy interface for programs execution. |
So there are some operating systems which are designed to be efficient and other are convenient sometimes combination of both.
What Operating System Do?
Computer system basically divided into four major components which are
- Hardware
- Operating system
- Application programs
- User
Hardware
Basic computing resources of computer system are CPU, I/O devices and memory.
Operating System
it is used to coordinates and controls the use of hardware among the various application programs
Application Program
Applications which are used to solve the user’s computing problems by using the computing resources such as spreadsheets, processor, web browser and compiler. Operating system can be explored by two point of views which are user and system point of view.
User View
The computer view is different according to the interface being used by the user. Here are some systems
|
Computer system |
Purpose |
| Personal Computer (PC) | Individual use |
| Minicomputer | Shared resources for multiple user |
| Workstations computer | Individual usability and resource utilization. |
| Handheld Computer | Individual usability |
Personal Computer (PC) is used to monopolized its resources. It is used by single user to maximize the work, in this case operating system is designed for ease of user.
Mainframe/Minicomputer many users accessing the same resources through the user terminals. This operating system is designed to maximized resource utilization such as CPU time, memory and I/O devices etc.
Workstations simply it is designed by using the combination of both PC and mainframe computer for individual usability and resource utilization.
System View
Operating system is viewed as resource allocator in context of computer hardware. A computer system contains many resources to solve out the user’s problem such as CPU, I/O devices memory and so on. Operating system works as manager to these resources, because it faces abundant and possibly conflicting requests for resources. operating system has to decide which and how resource should allocate to the specific program according to complete the task efficiently and correctly. Operating system also called as control program because it manages the execution of user program to avoid the improper use and errors of computer system. Various operations and I/O devices controls are especially concern of an operating system. Operating system can be defined as it is an all time running program of computer system which is usually called as kernel.
