Operating System
Operating System
Operating system is system software that controls and coordinates the use of hardware among the different application software and users. OS intermediates between the user of computer and the computer hardware. The user gives a command and the OS translates the command into a form that the machine can understand and execute.
OS has two main objectives—
1. to make the computer system convenient and easy to use, for the user
2. to use the computer hardware in an efficient way, by handling the details of the operations of the hardware.
» OS hides the working of the hardware from the user and makes it convenient for the user to use the machine. The application program used by the user requires the use of the hardware during processing. Some examples are—display of application’s user interface, loading a program into memory, using I/O devices, allocating CPU to different processes during execution, and store or load data from hard disk. When using the machine, the user gives the command to perform the required actions to the OS and the OS handles all the operational steps. The user is not bothered about how these actions will be performed. This is the job of OS. OS provides an interface to the application programs to interact with the hardware. The user need not get into the details of this interaction.
» At the other end, the different resources of computer hardware have to be managed and controlled. This includes managing the communication between different devices, controlling the sequence and execution of processes, allocating space on hard disk, providing error handling procedures etc. OS supervises and manages the hardware of the computer.
Abstract view of the components of a computer system
The hardware-the central processing unit (CPU), the memory, and the input/output (110) devices-provides the basic computing resources. The application programs-such as word processors, spreadsheets, compilers, and web browsers-define the ways in which these resources are used to solve the computing problems of the users. The operating system controls and coordinates the use of the hardware among the various application programs for the various users. The components of a computer system are its hardware, software, and data.
The operating system provides the means for the proper use of these resources in the operation of the computer system operating systems can be explored from two viewpoints the user and the system.