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1. What is an operating system? What function does operating system provide? Giv

ID: 3569491 • Letter: 1

Question

1. What is an operating system? What function does operating system provide? Give the history and evolution of operating system

2. Discuss the various hardware platforms that have operating system and what they are used for. Also discuss the desktop pc operating system and how it has evolved.

3. What is the KERNEL? Describe the difference between kernel mode and user mode.

4. Provide a complete overview of the features and utilities that most kernels posses.

5. What is a process? What are threads? Describe how process and threads are used in an operating system.

6. Why is the use of process and threads significantly important to the functionality of modern operating systems.

7. Describe how operating system manages memory. What is virtual, logical and physical memory?

8. What are frames and pages? How is the memory on a computer organised and accessed? Describe main memory component and features that an operating system provide.

9. Describe the concept of CPU scheduling and how it is performed. What components constitutes CPU scheduling?

10. How can CPU scheduling be optimized? What are some common CPU scheduling algorithms?

11. Describe Operating System protection and security. (How to protect, features existing as protection, are they functional or not?)

12. Describe what is meant by (Distributed Operating Systems) Describe the platforms, features and the unique characteristics of DOS.

Explanation / Answer

1)

It is very difficult for a computer user to communicate with the hardware directly. An operating system is an interface between the user and computer hardware. It simplifies the operations to be performed by the user.

Functions of Operating System are listed below:

2)

Operating System

Hardware Platform

Mac OS X

Macintosh

Redhat AS 4.x, AS 5.x

AMD/Intel PC

CentOS 4.x & 5.x

AMD/Intel PC

Windows 7

AMD/Intel PC

Windows Vista

AMD/Intel PC

Windows XP

AMD/Intel PC

Windows 2000

AMD/Intel PC

Solaris 8, 9 & 10 (SunOS 5.8, 5.9, 5.10)

Sparc (Intel/AMD?)

Solaris 5.5 through 7

Sparc

3)

A kernel is the most important module of the operating system. It manages the Input/output requests coming from various software installed in the computer and translates them into data processing instructions and send them for execution to CPU and other devices in the system. As it is a part of the operating system, it resides in main memory.

In kernel mode, the code under execution can access the hardware without any restriction. It is allowed to execute any CPU instruction and to access any memory address.

In user mode, the code under execution cannot access the hardware directly. Code running in user mode must delegate to system APIs to access hardware or memory.

Operating System

Hardware Platform

Mac OS X

Macintosh

Redhat AS 4.x, AS 5.x

AMD/Intel PC

CentOS 4.x & 5.x

AMD/Intel PC

Windows 7

AMD/Intel PC

Windows Vista

AMD/Intel PC

Windows XP

AMD/Intel PC

Windows 2000

AMD/Intel PC

Solaris 8, 9 & 10 (SunOS 5.8, 5.9, 5.10)

Sparc (Intel/AMD?)

Solaris 5.5 through 7

Sparc