Introduction To Operating System | OS Functions , Features And Types

welcome to learn computer scienceonline.com and in this video we are going to discuss what is an operating system its functions types and its importance in computer architecture and organization let us start with a simple brief introduction to the operating system an operating system is a group of software specially designed to help the user to manage and operate the computer system in other words the operating system is a type of system software that works as an interface between the system user and the computer hardware the operating system is an essential component of every computer system it

is a type of system software used by the computer system itself to manage and operate the system it also helps the computer user to interact with various Hardware components that are either connected or part of the computer system an operating system performs some of the most important functions that are crucial for the operation performance and the safety of the computer system the resource management is one such important function performed by the operating system all right after this brief introduction let us now dive a bit deeper to understand what is an operating system and its importance

in computer architecture and organization let us now discuss in detail what is an operating system in computer architecture the computer system basically consists of two types of components these components are first the hardware components and second the software components the computer hardware is a general term used to describe the various physical components that are essential part of the every computer system the computer hardware includes various mechanical electrical and electronics components used to build a computer system whereas the software components provide a set of instructions which directs the computer to perform a specific task in other

words a software is a computer program used to communicate with computer regarding the operation that we want computer to perform the computer system needs basically two types of software components the first type of software is called an application software and the second type of software is called a system software an application software is designed to allow the computer user to perform various tasks on the computer for example Microsoft Word is the most commonly used application software for creating the text documents whereas the system software is a special type of software internally used by the computer

system itself to manage and operate the computer system an operating system is the most important system software and it is an essential component of every computer when we power on and start the computer it is the operating system that gets loaded into the main memory RAM of the computer this startup operation which loads the operating system into the memory is called as computer booting process the computer user can operate the computer system only after the operating system software is fully loaded into the computer memory and it is fully operational once the operating system is fully

operational the computer can be used by the user to perform various tasks on the computer the computer system booting process is managed by a special program called the bio startup routine the term BIOS stands for basic input output system the BIOS program is a type of firmware that resides into the BIOS chip placed on the computer motherboard the main function of the BIOS software is to load the operating system and therefore the BIOS comes into action each time we switch on the computer the operating system gets the control of the system after the booting process

is complete let now briefly discuss some important functions performed by the operating system as discussed earlier the operating system performs several important functions the operating system functions include file management Process Management Resource Management memory management command interpreter and the system security let us now discuss some important features of the operating system the hardware interaction is the most important feature of the operating system let us discuss this topic in detail in computer architecture the operating system works as an interface between the application software and the computer hardware the application software is designed to allow the computer

user to perform various operations on the computer these operations might also include some Hardware interaction for example a computer user might use the Microsoft Word program to create a text document in some cases the user might also want to use the printer connected to the system for taking the print out of the document however the application program used by the user cannot directly communicate with the computer hardware and therefore in order to communicate with Hardware the application program needs operating system to communicate with the hardware device the operating system internally makes use of another piece

of system software called the device driver it is the device driver software that internally communicates with various Hardware components to execute various operations to be performed by the hardware for example when user executes the print command through an application software the operating system internally used the printer device driver to execute the print command let us now discuss different types of operating systems different types of operating systems are used depending upon the user requirements type of the Computing device and the system configuration some important types of operating system include a single user and the multi-user operating

system batch operating system time sharing operating system distributed operating system Network operating system embedded operating system real-time operating system and a mobile device operating system all right let us now summarize what is an operating system the operating system is a type of system software and essential component of every computer system it internally consists of group of programs specially designed to help the user to operate and manage the computer system that brings to the end of this tutorial on what is an operating system please visit our website learncomputerscienceonline.com to learn computer science online if you have

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