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OPERATING SYSTEM
An is a software that controls the hardware” or a programs that make the hardware
useable. suit of programs that allows certain computer operations to be done
automatically. The operating system is a suit of programs that takes control of the
computer to the extent of being able to allow a number of programs without human
intervention. It is a software program that enables the computer hardware to
communicate and operate with the computer software. Without a computer operating
system, a computer would be useless
An Operating system is a program that manages the hardware. It also provides a basis
for an application programs and act as an intermediary between the user of a computer
and the computer hardware The operating system controls the way the software uses
the hardware the role of operating system is primarily that of resource management
The Operating System provides the means for proper use of the resources in the
operation of computer system An OS is similar to a government. Like a government,
it performs no useful function by itself. It simply provides an environment within
which other programs can do useful work.

Objectives of Operating Systems

Modern Operating systems generally have following three major goals. Operating
systems generally accomplish these goals by running processes in low privilege and
providing service calls that invoke the operating system kernel in high-privilege state.
i. To hide details of hardware by creating abstraction An abstraction is
software that hides lower level details and provides a set of higher-level
functions. An operating system transforms the physical world of devices,
instructions, memory, and time into virtual world that is the result of
abstractions built by the operating system. There are several reasons for
abstraction.
First, the code needed to control peripheral devices is not standardized.
Operating systems provide subroutines called device drivers that perform
operations on behalf of programs for example, input/output operations.
Second, the operating system introduces new functions as it abstracts the
hardware. For instance, operating system introduces the file abstraction so
that programs do not have to deal with disks.
Third, the operating system transforms the computer hardware into multiple
virtual computers, each belonging to a different program. Each program

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that is running is called a process. Each process views the hardware

through the lens of abstraction.
Fourth, the operating system can enforce security through abstraction.
ii To allocate resources to processes (Manage resources) An operating
system controls how processes (the active agents) may access resources
(passive entities).
iii. Provide a pleasant, convenient, and effective user interface: The user
interacts with the operating systems through the user interface and usually
interested in the “look and feel” of the operating system. The most important
components of the user interface are the command interpreter, the file system,
on-line help, and application integration. The recent trend has been toward
increasingly integrated graphical user interfaces that encompass the activities of
multiple processes on networks of computers.

FUNCTIONS OF THE OPERATING SYSTEMS

The functions of the operating systems include:
1. Process Management: The operating system manages many kinds of activities
ranging from user programs to system programs like printer spooler, name
servers, file server etc. Each of these activities is encapsulated in a process. A
process includes the complete execution context (code, data, PC, registers, OS
resources in use etc.).
It is important to note that a process is not a program. A process is only ONE
instant of a program in execution. There are many processes can be running the
same program. The five major activities of an operating system in regard to
process management are
 Creation and deletion of user and system processes.
 Suspension and resumption of processes.
 A mechanism for process synchronization.
 A mechanism for process communication.
 A mechanism for deadlock handling.
2. Main-Memory Management: Primary-Memory or Main-Memory is a large
array of words or bytes. Each word or byte has its own address. Main-memory
provides storage that can be access directly by the CPU. That is to say for a

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program to be executed, it must in the main memory. The major activities of an

operating in regard to memory-management are:
 Keep track of which part of memory are currently being used and by whom.
 Decide which processes are loaded into memory when memory space
becomes available.
 Allocate and deallocate memory space as needed.
3. File Management: A file is a collected of related information defined by its
creator. Computer can store files on the disk (secondary storage), which provide
long term storage. Some examples of storage media are magnetic tape, magnetic
disk and optical disk. Each of these media has its own properties like speed,
capacity, data transfer rate and access methods. File systems normally organized
into directories to ease their use. These directories may contain files and other
directions.
The five main major activities of an operating system in regard to file
management are
1. The creation and deletion of files.
2. The creation and deletion of directions.
3. The support of primitives for manipulating files and directions.
4. The mapping of files onto secondary storage.
5. The back up of files on stable storage media.
4. I/O System Management: I/O subsystem hides the peculiarities of specific
hardware devices from the user. Only the device driver knows the peculiarities
of the specific device to which it is assigned.
5. Secondary-Storage Management : Generally speaking, systems have several
levels of storage, including primary storage, secondary storage and cache
storage. Instructions and data must be placed in primary storage or cache to be
referenced by a running program. Because main memory is too small to
accommodate all data and programs, and its data are lost when power is lost, the
computer system must provide secondary storage to back up main memory.
Secondary storage consists of tapes, disks, and other media designed to hold
information that will eventually be accessed in primary storage (primary,
secondary, cache) is ordinarily divided into bytes or words consisting of a fixed
number of bytes. Each location in storage has an address; the set of all addresses
available to a program is called an address space.

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The three major activities of an operating system in regard to secondary storage

management are:
1. Managing the free space available on the secondary-storage device.
2. Allocation of storage space when new files have to be written.
3. Scheduling the requests for memory access.
6. Networking Management : A distributed system is a collection of processors
that do not share memory, peripheral devices, or a clock. The processors
communicate with one another through communication lines called network.
The communication-network design must consider routing and connection
strategies, and the problems of contention and security.
7. Protection System: If a computer system has multiple users and allows the
concurrent execution of multiple processes, then the various processes must be
protected from one another's activities. Protection refers to mechanism for
controlling the access of programs, processes, or users to the resources defined
by computer systems.
8. Command Interpretation: A command interpreter is an interface of the
operating system with the user. The user gives commands with are executed by
operating system (usually by turning them into system calls). The main function
of a command interpreter is to get and execute the next user specified command.
Command-Interpreter is usually not part of the kernel, since multiple command
interpreters (shell, in UNIX terminology) may be support by an operating
system, and they do not really need to run in kernel mode. There are two main
advantages to separating the command interpreter from the kernel.
1. If we want to change the way the command interpreter looks, i.e., I want to
change the interface of command interpreter, I am able to do that if the
command interpreter is separate from the kernel. I cannot change the code
of the kernel so I cannot modify the interface.
2. If the command interpreter is a part of the kernel it is possible for a
malicious process to gain access to certain part of the kernel that it showed
not have to avoid this ugly scenario it is advantageous to have the
command interpreter separate from kernel.

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COMMON OPERATING SYSTEMS

Operating System Company Hardware
VMS Digital Equipment Corp.(DEC) VAX, Alpha (AXP)
UNIX variants
SunOS/Solaris Sun Microsystems SPARC, Intel, Motorola
HPUX Hewlett-Packard PA
IRIX Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) MIPS
ULTRIX Digital Equipment Corp.(DEC) VAX, MIPS
UNICOS Cray Research Inc. (CRI) CRAY
Linux Free, supported by GNU Intel
System 6,7 Apple Motorola, Power
OS/2 (WARP) IBM Intel
OS/400 IBM 360/370/390, Power
VM/CMS IBM 360/370/390
MVS/XA IBM 360/370/390
MVS/ESA IBM 360/370/390
DOS Microsoft (MS) Intel
DOS + MS Windows Microsoft (MS) Intel
MS Windows 95 , Me, 2000 Microsoft (MS) Intel
Windows NT, Xp, 7, 8, 10 Microsoft (MS) Intel, Alpha, MIPS
etc

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