OS Intro

An Introduction to
Operating Systems

Definition
 An Operating System, or
OS, is low-level software
that enables a user and
higher-level application
software to interact with a
computer’s hardware and
the data and other
programs stored on the
computer.
 An OS performs basic
tasks, such as recognizing
input from the keyboard,
sending output to the
display screen, keeping
track of files and directories
on the disk, and controlling
peripheral devices such as
printers.

Other Services
 Program Execution
OS provides an environment where the user can conveniently run
programs. The user does not have to worry about memory allocation
or CPU scheduling.
 I/O Operations
Each program requires input and produces output. The OS hides
some of the details of the underlying hardware for such I/O. All the
user sees is that the I/O has been performed, without those details.
 Communications
There are instances where processes need to communicate with
each other to exchange information. It may be between processes
running on the same computer or running on different computers.
The OS provides these services to application programs, making
inter-process communication possible, and relieving the user of
having to worry about how this accomplished.

Application programs and OS
 Operating systems provide a software platform on top of which other
programs, called application programs, can run.
 The choice of operating system, therefore, determines to a great
extent the applications a user can run.
 For example, the DOS operating system contains commands such
as COPY and RENAME for copying files and changing the names of
files, respectively. The commands are accepted and executed by a
part of the operating system.
 Similarly, the UNIX operating system has commands like CP and
MV to copy and rename.

UNIX
 UNIX was one of the first operating systems
to be written, in 1971.
 Advantages of UNIX are…
 Multitasking – multiple programs can run at
one time.
 Multi-user – allows more than a single user
to work at any given time. This is
accomplished by sharing processing time
between each user.
 Safe – prevents one program from
accessing memory or storage space
allocated to another program, and enables
file protection, requiring users to have
permission to perform certain functions,
such as accessing a directory, file, or disk
drive.

Types of OS
 Microsoft Windows
 Mainframe
 DOS
 OS/2
 Linux
 Mac OS
 AmigaOS

OS Intro

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