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.

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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.

What are the 5 operating system? 

Microsoft Win­dows, Apple macOS, Lin­ux, Android, and Apple’s iOS.

What is an operating system?

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.

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