03-10-2012, 04:29 PM
Operating System
What is an Operating System?
An Operating System is an application that controls a computer. This is not the same as the applications that you create - those are usually only run when you want them. An OS runs almost as soon as the computer is turned on.
Definition: An Operating System is a computer program that manages the resources of a computer. It accepts keyboard or mouse inputs from users and displays the results of the actions and allows the user to run applications, or communicate with other computers via networked connections.
Windows is an Operating System, as is Linux and the Apple Mac OS X.
Definition of Operating System
An Operating System is a software program or set of programs that mediate access between physical devices (such as a keyboard, mouse, monitor, disk drive or network connection) and application programs (such as a word processor, World-Wide Web browser or electronic mail client).
Some characteristics of an Operating System are:
• Whether multiple programs can run on it simultaneously: multi-tasking
• Whether it can take advantage of multiple processors: multi-processing
• Whether multiple users can run programs on it simultaneously: multi-user
• Whether it can reliably prevent application programs from directly accessing hardware devices: protected
• Whether it has built-in support for graphics.
• Whether it has built-in support for networks.
Some popular Operating System's are:
• Unix: multi-tasking, multi-processing, multi-user, protected, with built-in support for networking but not graphics.
• Windows NT: multi-tasking, multi-processing, single-user, protected, with built-in support for networking and graphics.
• Windows 95/98: multi-tasking, multi-processing, single-user, unprotected, with built-in support for networking and graphics.
• Windows 3.x: single-tasking, single-processing, single-user, unprotected, with built-in support for graphics but not networking.
• DOS: single-tasking, single-processing, single-user, unprotected with no built-in support for graphics or networking.
• NetWare: multi-tasking, multi-processing, single-user, unprotected, with built-in support for networking but not graphics.