What Is an Operating System?

Operating systems (OS) are a collection of integrated software that manage computer resources and operations. From a user’s point of standpoint, the OS is invisible — but it does provide applications with services that they can utilize to make computer hardware and software more accessible.

This is an essential operating system function. The OS must be able to organize the contents of files to increase speed, reliability, and efficiency of storage. This structure, called the file-system, allows files to have attributes and names. They can also be organized into directories or folders to create an a directory tree.

The majority of computers are equipped with a variety of hardware devices like keyboards, printers as well as other peripherals. These devices depend on device driver software to communicate with the operating system. The operating system installs and configures these drivers to provide the correct service to applications. It also hides the hardware configuration from users so that they are able to interact with their system without having to know the precise configuration of the hardware.

Process Management

An OS keeps track of all the applications running on the computer and determines the amount of time that should be allocated to each one in a multitasking environment. It also controls the interruptions that programs www.myopendatablog.com/what-if-your-nintendo-switch-stops-turning-on/ create to keep a processor’s focus and ensures that there enough memory available for an application to complete its task without interfering with other processes.

Operating systems also perform other functions which are related to the overall functioning of the computer like keeping the primary memory full of large byte or word arrays which each have an address. The OS monitors how many of these bytes are utilized by various applications and can then move, delete or rearrange them to free space.