Operating Systems Explained
Monday, December 1st, 2008You may have heard of UNIX, Windows and Mac OS, but what is an operating system and what does it do? The operating system is like the backbone of the computer. An operating system is the primary software that organizes and controls all the hardware, functions, operations and software programs of a computer.
When consumers buy computers they usually come with an operating system. The kind of operating system depends on the computer that has been purchased. Most desktop computers come with a Microsoft Windows operating system while Apple computers usually run a Macintosh operating system. Servers on the other hand are still dominated by Unix and Linux but Windows is common there as well.
Not only computers make use of operating systems. They come in many electronic devices like cell phones, video game consoles and even in high tech fridges and coffee machines.
The operating system has control over all the functions of the computer and manages how software programs work and their communication and interactions with each other. The operating system is responsible for making sure everything runs smoothly during the operation of your computer and that the programs that are running do not interfere with each other.
The operating system manages all the computer’s hardware by loading so called drivers which are used to interact with the hardware.
The software programs that run on the operating system receive the hardware information from it without having to use their own functions to interact with the hardware directly. All hardware of the computer is managed by the operating system.
The operating system is the core component. It recognizes input from computer hardware or software and sends the requests to software or hardware that is running or connected to the computer. It is basically moving data from one piece to another on the computer. Moving the computer mouse sends the information about the speed and direction to the operating system which transfers the information to the video card which outputs the result on the computer monitor.
Operating systems make use of user groups and users. This is being used to give users access to specific parts of the operating system. It can also prevent certain users and user groups from accessing parts of the operating system, software or hardware.
