Operating Systems Software
An Operating System (OS) is a set of computer programs that manages computer hardware resources and acts as an interface with computer applications programs. The operating system is a vital component of the system software in a computer system. Application programs usually require an operating system to function that provides a convenient environment to users for executing their programs. Computer hardware with operating system can thus be viewed as an extended machine, which is more powerful and easy to use. Some prominent Operating systems used nowadays are
Windows 7, Windows 8, Linux, UNIX, etc.
All computing devices run an operating system. For personal computers, the most popular operating systems are Microsoft’s Windows, Apple’s OS X, and different versions of Linux. Smart phones and tablets run operating systems as well, such as Apple’s iOS, Google Android, Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS, and Research in Motion’s Blackberry OS.
A variety of activities are executed by Operating systems which include:
Performing hardware functions: Application programs to perform tasks must obtain input from keyboards, retrieve data from disk & display output on monitors. Achieving all this is facilitated by operating system. Operating system acts as an intermediary between the application program and the hardware.
User Interfaces: An important function of any operating system is to provide user interface. If we remember DOS days, it had a command based User Interface (UI) i.e. text commands were given to computer to execute any command. But today we are more used to Graphic User Interface (GUI) which uses icons & menus like in the case of Windows. So, how we interface with our system will be provided by Operating system.
Hardware Independence: Every computer could have different specifications and configurations of hardware. If application developer would have to rewrite code for every configuration s/he would be in a big trouble. Fortunately, we have operating system, which provides Application Program Interfaces (API), which can be used by application developers to create application software, thus obviating the need to understand the inner workings of OS and hardware. Thus, OS gives us hardware independence.
Memory Management: Memory Management features of Operating System allow controlling how memory is accessed and maximize available memory & storage. Operating systems also provides Virtual Memory by carving an area of hard disk to supplement the functional memory capacity of RAM. In this way, it augments memory by creating a virtual RAM.
Task Management: Task Management feature of Operating system helps in allocating resources to make optimum utilization of resources. This facilitates a user to work with more than one application at a time i.e. multitasking and allows more than one user to use the system i.e. time sharing.
Networking Capability: Operating systems can provide systems with features & capabilities to help connect computer networks. Like Linux & Windows 8 give us an excellent capability to connect to internet.
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