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What 's An Operating System? Essay

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What 's an Operating System?
An operating system (OS) is a software program that enables the computer hardware to communicate and operate with the computer software. OS is the software that supports a computer 's basic functions, such as scheduling tasks, executing applications, and controlling peripherals. It is a program that acts as an interface between the user and the computer hardware and controls the execution of all kinds of programs in computer/computer devices. The users of the computer interact with the system and application software which are installed and function in OS. Likewise for the hardware such as Keyboard, printers, mouse, CPU, registers, disks, monitors, RAM and other I/O devices to be functional they need an operating system in which their systems are embedded (fig. 1 shows the interaction)

Figure 1: Interactions between hardware, OS, and user interface

Where does the OS fit in?
On an ordinary computer, the operating system does permanently reside on the hard disk. It is then loaded into memory on boot by the boot loader. Since the OS is initially loaded into the computer by a boot program, manages all the other programs in a computer it has to be located between the hardware and the user interface. The OS must fill the gap between how the user runs a program and how the hardware runs a program. It fits the layer between the hardware and the user program (application programs). The OS directly interacts with the hardware and user interface

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