What is an Operating System? All you need to know

Oper­at­ing Sys­tem is Soft­ware that acts as an inter­face between com­put­er hard­ware and User. It is used by users for com­mu­ni­cat­ing with devices. Devices like mobile hard­ware, com­put­er hard­ware, ATM hard­ware, and so on.

Subscribe on YouTube

Get free tutorials, exam tips & updates.

Subscribe

Join WhatsApp Channel

Stay updated with instant alerts.

Follow

Free SSC Mock Tests

Boost your preparation with free practice tests.

Start Now

Govt Job Alerts

Get free daily updates on government jobs.

Get Alerts

Oper­at­ing Sys­tem is made up of two words first Oper­at­ing Means How to use and the sec­ond word is a sys­tem which is like a method or an approach which we used to use the system.

Why is it required for communicating with devices like Mobile, Computer and so on?

It is required because com­put­ers and devices like com­put­ers can under­stand only machine lan­guage. For us, it is not easy to first learn machine lan­guage then use a com­put­er and it also may take a long time. So replac­ing these process­es as I dis­cussed above.  We intro­duced the Oper­at­ing System.

Types of Operating System

• Real Time OS
• Dis­trib­uted OS
• Batch Oper­at­ing System
• Multitasking/ Time Shar­ing OS
• Net­work OS
• Mobile OS

Real-Time Oper­at­ing Sys­tem:-  Real-Time oper­at­ing sys­tems are the sys­tems that are use­ful where the events occur in a short time. Mil­i­tary soft­ware sys­tems and space soft­ware sys­tems are two exam­ples of real-time oper­at­ing systems.

Dis­trib­uted Oper­at­ing System(DOS):- Dis­trib­uted sys­tems use many proces­sors locat­ed in dif­fer­ent machines that pro­vide quick com­pu­ta­tion to their users.

Batch Oper­at­ing Sys­tem:- Batch OS is the first OS for sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion com­put­ers. The Batch Oper­at­ing Sys­tem does not direct­ly inter­act with the com­put­er. Instead, an oper­a­tor gath­ers jobs that are relat­ed and arranges them into a batch, which is then com­plet­ed one by one accord­ing to the first-come, first-serve concept.

Mul­ti­task­ing/­Time-Shar­ing OS:- Mul­ti­task­ing/­Time-shar­ing oper­at­ing sys­tem as the name sug­gests. It uses a com­mon com­put­er that enables peo­ple locat­ed at a dif­fer­ent terminal(shell). Time-shar­ing oper­at­ing sys­tems use a sin­gle com­put­er sys­tem at the same time. Time-shar­ing refers to the divi­sion of proces­sor time (CPU) among many users.

Net­work OS:- Net­work oper­at­ing sys­tems are the sys­tems that run on a serv­er and It man­ages all the net­work­ing func­tions like shar­ing var­i­ous files, appli­ca­tions, print­ers, secu­ri­ty, and oth­er net­work­ing func­tions over a small net­work of com­put­ers like LAN or any oth­er pri­vate net­work. Every user in the net­work OS is aware of the con­fig­u­ra­tions of every oth­er user on the net­work. Tight­ly con­nect­ed sys­tems are anoth­er name for net­work oper­at­ing systems.

Mobile OS:- A mobile Oper­at­ing Sys­tem is an oper­at­ing sys­tem that is designed for smart­phones, tablets, and PDA’s. It’s a plat­form that allows oth­er apps to oper­ate on mobile devices.

Functions of Operating System

Here is the list of func­tions of the oper­at­ing System

• Mem­o­ry Management
• Process Man­age­ment
• File Man­age­ment
• Device Man­age­ment
• Error Detec­tion
• I/O Sys­tem Management
• Secu­ri­ty
• Job account­ing
• Com­mu­ni­ca­tion management
• Con­trol over sys­tem performance

Mem­o­ry Man­age­ment:- In mem­o­ry man­age­ment it refers to the man­age­ment of Pri­ma­ry or Main Mem­o­ry. It is allo­cat­ing mem­o­ry depend­ing upon the need for resources. It is allo­cat­ing mem­o­ry to the process and deal­lo­cat­ing after the process is finished.

Process Man­age­ment:- The Oper­at­ing Sys­tem selects which process­es get the proces­sor when and for how long in process man­age­ment. This func­tion is called process sched­ul­ing. Process Man­age­ment keeps track of the proces­sor and the sta­tus of the proces­sor. A traf­fic con­troller is the pro­gram that accom­plish­es this duty. Allo­cates a proces­sor-based CPU to a process. When a process is no longer need­ed, the proces­sor is de-allocated.

File Man­age­ment:- A file sys­tem is orga­nized in the form of direc­to­ries for effi­cient or easy wayfind­ing and usage. There are pos­si­bil­i­ties that direc­to­ries may con­tain oth­er direc­to­ries and oth­er files. An Oper­at­ing Sys­tem. It keeps track of where infor­ma­tion is stored, user access set­tings and sta­tus of every file, and so on. These facil­i­ties are col­lec­tive­ly known as the file system.

Device Man­age­ment:- An oper­at­ing sys­tem (OS) con­trols device con­nec­tion through dri­vers. It man­ages devices by doing the fol­low­ing tasks. This pro­gram keeps track of all the devices that are linked to the sys­tem. Deter­mines which process­es are allowed access to a device and for how long. Allo­cates devices in a way that is both effec­tive and effi­cient. When a device is no longer need­ed, it is deallocated.

Error detect­ing aids:- Dump files, traces, error mes­sages, and oth­er debug­ging and error-detec­tion tools are cre­at­ed. The oper­at­ing sys­tem con­stant­ly mon­i­tors the sys­tem in order to dis­cov­er faults and pre­vent the machine from malfunctioning.

I/O Sys­tem Man­age­ment:- One of the main objects of any OS is to hide the pecu­liar­i­ties of hard­ware devices from the user.

Secu­ri­ty:- To safe­guard user data, the oper­at­ing sys­tem employs pass­word pro­tec­tion and oth­er relat­ed mea­sures. It also guards against unau­tho­rized access to pro­grams and user data.

Job account­ing:- Keep­ing track of the amount of time and resources used by dif­fer­ent jobs and users.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion man­age­ment:- Com­pil­ers, inter­preters, and oth­er soft­ware resources of the var­i­ous users of the com­put­er sys­tems are coor­di­nat­ed and assigned.

Con­trol over sys­tem per­for­mance:- Keep­ing track of how long it takes for the sys­tem to respond to ser­vice requests.

Features of Operating System

Here is the list of fea­tures of the oper­at­ing System

• It pro­vides file Sys­tem Abstraction.
• It pro­vides a user interface.
• It pro­vides a plat­form for run an applications
• It han­dles mem­o­ry man­age­ment and CPU scheduling.
• It pro­vides Net­work Support.
• It Sup­ports appli­ca­tion development
• It Pro­vides secu­ri­ty features
• It Pro­vides util­i­ties and sys­tem services.

Examples of Operating System

Here are some exam­ples of Oper­at­ing Systems

Microsoft Win­dows

Microsoft Win­dows is a col­lec­tion of graph­i­cal oper­at­ing sys­tems from the com­pa­ny Microsoft. Which is devel­oped, mar­ket­ed, and sold by Microsoft. It has dif­fer­ent types of win­dows like Win­dows 95, Win­dows 7, Win­dows 8, Win­dows 10, and Win­dows 11. 

macOS

macOS is a series of graph­i­cal oper­at­ing sys­tems. Which is devel­oped by Apple Inc. It is the suc­ces­sor to Mac OS X, and it is the os that pow­ers Apple’s Mac fam­i­ly of computers.

Lin­ux

It is built around the Lin­ux ker­nel and It is a free and open-source soft­ware oper­at­ing sys­tem. Lin­ux is one of the most famous oper­at­ing sys­tems for servers and embed­ded devices. Mil­lions of peo­ple use it on their com­put­ers all over the world.

Android

Android is a Google-cre­at­ed mobile oper­at­ing sys­tem. It is based on the Lin­ux ker­nel. It was cre­at­ed with touch­screen mobile devices in mind, such as smart­phones and tablets.

iOS

Anoth­er exam­ple of an Apple Inc. mobile oper­at­ing sys­tem. iOs is the suc­ces­sor to iPhone OS. It is the oper­at­ing sys­tem that runs the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.