
Like a government, it performs no useful function by itself.

An operating system is similar to a government. The operating system provides the means for proper use of these resources in the operation of the computer system. We can also view a computer system as consisting of hardware, software, and data. The operating system controls the hardware and coordinates its use among the various application programs for the various users. The application programs -such as word processors, spreadsheets, compilers, and Web browsers -define the ways in which these resources are used to solve users’ computing problems. The hardware -the central processing unit ( CPU ), the memory, and the input/output ( I/O ) devices -provides the basic computing resources for the system. A computer system can be divided roughly into four components: the hardware, the operating system, the application programs, and the users (Figure 1.1). We begin our discussion by looking at the operating system’s role in the overall computer system. 20.12 Macintosh Operating System and WindowsĬompiler assembler text editor … database systemįigure 1.1 Abstract view of the components of a computer system.19.4 Terminal Services and Fast User Switching.17.2 Types of Network-based Operating Systems.16.6 Virtualization and Operating-System Components.16.5 Types of Virtual Machines and Their Implementations.15.7 Firewalling to Protect Systems and Networks.14.5 Implementation of the Access Matrix.13.5 Transforming I/O Requests to Hardware Operations.8.7 Example: Intel 32 and 64-bit Architectures.5.7 Classic Problems of Synchronization.2.6 Operating-System Design and Implementation.
