Operating System example essay topic

385 words
Computers originally lacked any sort of operating system and the user had sole use of the machine. He would arrive at the machine with program and data, often on punched paper tape. The program would be loaded into the machine, and the machine set to work, until the program stopped, or maybe more likely, crashed. Programs could generally be debugged via a front panel using switches and lights. With early computers users had to have quite a great knowledge of what they were doing on a computer to actually get anywhere. MSDOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) changed this first of all by allowing ordinary users to carry out a range of activities by using learning a range of commands.

The simple commands would then be translated into tasks for the hardware to carry out. Operating systems make using a computer available to users without having to handle any of the hardware. 'An operating system could be considered as a foreman of a building site. When the manager (i.e. the user) asks for a job to be done the foreman takes on the job of ensuring the physical task was carried out. The manager need not know where the resources are kept and what activities are involved- that's the job of the foreman. ' Operating systems have two main purposes: 1.

To use the resources of the computer efficiently 2. To conceal difficulties of dealing with the complex hardware of the computer The operating system is the lowest level of software on a computer with any programs applications etc running over the operating system. The operating system loads as soon as the computer boots up before any other program starts. This means that the type of operating system used on the computer defines how the system is used. The types of operating systems are: o Personal Computers o Batch Processing Systems o Real-time systems o Multi user systems o Parallel systems o Distributed systems Although there are quite a few operating systems available on the market the vast majority of computers use Microsoft Windows which originated from MSDOS as mentioned earlier. The only other operating system in contention with Microsoft is a system called Linux a version of UNIX.