COSC 80 1960- Moore’s Law predicted that the number of transistors

TOPIC 1: Overview of Operating Systems on an integrated circuit would double every 18 months, and
that prediction has held true. The fundamental goal of
OPERATING SYSTEM computer systems is to execute programs and to make
It is a software that manages a computer’s hardware. It also solving user problems easier. The common function of
provides a basis for application programs and acts as an controlling and allocating resources are then brought
intermediary between the computer user and the computer together into one piece of software: the operating system.
hardware. The two parts of operating system are: Kernel and Shell
(system programs & application programs).
Operating system in a modern computing environment
Understand the organization and architecture of the Kernel and Shell
computer hardware. This includes the CPU, memory, and I/O A kernel is basically the core
devices, as well as storage. A fundamental responsibility of an and the heart of an OS. It
operating system is to allocate these resources to programs. functions to manage the
operation of the hardware and
What Operating Systems do? the computer.
A computer system can be divided roughly into four Shell refers to a special user
components: the hardware, the operating system, the program or an environment that
application programs, and a user. provides a user with an
We can also view a computer system as consisting of interface for using the services
hardware, software, and data. The operating system provides of the operating system.
the means for proper use of these resources in the operation
of the computer system. Why study operating systems?
Simply because, as almost all code runs on top of an
operating system, knowledge of how operating systems work
is crucial to proper, efficient, effective, and secure
programming.

SYSTEM SOFTWARE AND SYSTEM PROGRAMMING

Software it is defined as a program or set of instructions that
tells the computer what to do.
2 classes of software:
- System Software
- Application Software

Benefits
The hide the “ugly” details of how the computer operations
from the user. It creates a virtual machine interface where
User view the user does not need to know how the computer works on
The user’s view of the computer varies according to the the hardware level. Computer programmers can write
interface being used. The operating system is designed programs without knowing the details of how the computer
mostly for ease of use, with some attention paid to hardware works. System software such as an operating
performance and security and none paid to resource system controls the execution of programs.
utilization.
System Software programs that control the basic operation
System view of a computer system. Ex. Operating systems,
The computer’s point of view, the operating system is the communications control programs, interpreters, compilers,
program most intimately involve with the hardware. In this debuggers, text editors, linkers, loaders.
context, we can view an operating system as a resource Application Software these programs are used to accomplish
allocator. specialized tasks for computer users.

Operating system as control program Software Under Application Software

It manages the execution of user programs to prevent errors Document Production Software - these are programs that
and improper use of the computer. are used to compose, edit, print, and electronically publish
documents. Example of this are word processing software
Defining the Operating Systems (Microsoft’s Word and OpenOffice.org’s Writer), desktip
Computing started as an experiment to determine what publishing software (Microsoft’s Publisher and Adobe’s
could be done and quickly move to fixed-purpose systems for PageMaker), and Web authoring software (Microsoft’s
military uses, such as code breaking and trajectory plotting, Expression Web and Macromedia’s Dreamweaver).
and governmental uses, such as census calculation. Spreadsheet Software - these are programs that are used to
create and manipulate spreadsheets electronically for
analysis, planning, and modeling. Example of this are
Microsoft’s Excel and OpenOffice.org’s Calc.
Presentation Software - these are programs that are used to System Programming - the act of developing system
create and display information in the form of slide shows. software.
Example of this are Microsoft’s PowerPoint and Languages used to write a system program:
OpenOffice.org’s Impress. 1. Machine Language
Database Management Software - these are programs that 2. Assembly Language
are used to store, modify, and retrieve information from a 3. High-level Programming Languages
database in an organized and structured manner. Example of
this are Microsoft’s Access, SQL Server, and OpenOffice.org’s Types of System Programs
Base. Language Translators - these system programs convert a
Business Software - these are program that can provide high-level language program or assembly language program
users with tools for business management. Example of this into machine language.
are finance software (Microsoft’s Money and Reilly’s Assemblers (assembly language to machine language)
Monedance), accounting software (Peachtree’s Accounting), Compilers (high-level programming language to machine
tax preparation (Quicken’s TurboTax), etc. language)
Multimedia Software - these are programs that can Interpreters - these are programs that converts and execute
manipulate picture, sound, and video. Example of this are instructions of high-level programming language as it runs,
image editing software (Adobe’s Photoshop and Corel’s before going to the next instructions.
Photo-Paint), audio editing software (Adobe’s Audition and Linker - system program that combines or links the modules
Sony’s Sound Forge), and video editing software (Adobe’s together with the libraries which then form a single
Premiere and Autodesk’s Maya). executable program called load module.
Entertainment Software - Examples of this are music players Loader - system program that takes the load module from
(Nullsoft’s Winamp and Media Science’s Sonique), video secondary storage and brings into main memory for
players (Microsoft’s Media Player and CyberLink’s execution; also performs address binding (these are symbolic
PowerDVD), games (Blizzard’s WarCraft and Valve’s Counter- variables are used to represent data in a program).
Strike), etc. Techniques of address binding:
1. Absolute loading
How System Software Supports Application Software? 2. Relocatable loading
System software supports all application programs. For 3. Dynamic run-time loading
example, a user using an application program such as
Microsoft Word clicks on the save icon to tell Word to save a Operating System Functions
document. In this process, Word does not communicate with It creates a virtual machine interface between the
the printer, but rather requests the operating system to print user/application program and the hardware. This is called a
the document. hardware abstraction or resource abstraction wherein users
and application programs are isolated from the details of the
hardware resources. All services that involve the use of
computer hardware must first pass through the operating
system.
It acts as the computer’s resource manager or resource
allocator. All applications need resources in order to execute
and only the operating system has the authority to allocate
this.
It functions as the program launcher. If a user executes a
program, the operating system locates it in the secondary
storage, loads it in the main memory, and executes it.

Goals
1. The operating system should make the computer easy and
convenient to use.
2. The operating system should manage the resources of the
computer system to make them more efficient.
3. The operating system should execute and control
programs.

The operating system must be executed when the computer

is turned on. A boot strap program stored in the computer’s
read-only memory (ROM) is executed upon power on. Its
main function is to perform power-on self test (POST) which
checks if all the computer hardware are in good working
condition. Another program called boot block loader locates
the operating system and loads it in the main memory.
At this point, the operating system takes charge of the
computer system.
Parts of Operating System Core Components of an Operating System
Extensive Discussion of Kernel and Shell Process Manager
Kernel is the heart and soul of the operating system. It If there are several programs running on a CPU, the process
directly controls the computer hardware and performs the manager (process scheduler or CPU scheduler) is responsible
services of the operating system. The services offered by the for determining which among these programs will execute
kernel must be used in order to access hardware resources. first and determine runtime duration. It is also responsible
The kernel makes appropriate system calls or requests to for program termination, inter-process communication,
communicate with the hardware resources. An operating process synchronization, and deadlock handling.
system’s kernel always resides in the main memory for Memory Manager
immediate access to its services. The memory manager handles memory allocation and
Shell often called comman interpreter, is part of the monitor which memory areas are in use and which are free
operating system that serves as the interface between users or available. It also provides protection mechanisms to
and the kernel. Users enter command via the shell in order to ensure that memory locations assigned to a process will not
use the service of the kernel. be taken by other processes.
File Manager
Types of shell: The files stored in the secondary storage are organized and
Command-line Interface (CLI) - requires to type the presented for easy access by the file manager. File and
commands at a prompt. This can be seen in old DOS and directories or folders can be created, deleted, modified,
some Linux systems. It requires knowledge of commands and copied, moved, renamed, and viewed using this component.
proper instruction formulation. It also prevents unauthorized file access.
Graphical User Interface (GUI) - requires users to enter I/O Manager
commands by either using drop-down menus or by clicking The different input-output devices of the computer system
on icons using a mouse pointer. This can be seen in modern are managed by the I/O manager (device manager). it grants
systems such as Windows and Mac OS. user requests to use the I/O devices and resolves conflict
issues when two or more programs access a device at the
Services provided by an Operating System same time.
Program Execution
The operating system locates a program in the secondary
storage, loads it in the main memory, and executes it. It also
controls program execution for proper access to main
memory and I/O devices. The operating system takes care of
memory allocation and CPU scheduling.
Access to I/O Devices
Access to I/O devices is provided by the operating system,
particularly the input and output operations. Examples of this
are printing documents, saving files, input from keyboard, etc.
All I/O operations must first pass through the operating
system to ensure proper and efficient use of I/O devices.
File Management System
Access to files in secondary storage is provided by the
operating system. Examples of file operations are file
creation, deletion, editing, archiving, renaming, etc. It also
prevents unauthorized access to file unless the user has been
given the right to do so.
System Access
The operating system prevents unauthorized access to the
computer system. This is useful especially in a computer
system with multiple users. This is usually done by
implementing a log-in mechanism such as user account name
and the corresponding password. Access privileges can also
be modified depending on user type. In this way, improper
and malicious use of resources can be prevented.
Error Handling
The operating system detects hardware-oriented and
software-oriented errors within the computer system and
also takes proper actions to resolve them.
Communication
The operating system is responsible for facilitating
communication among processes. There are situations
wherein a computer is running several programs at the same
time while communicating with one another because they
share data. In other situations, several computer systems
may need to communicate with each other.