What is an Operating System?

Operating System:

An operating system is a set of programs that allows us to manage memory, disk, information storage media and the different peripherals or resources of our computer, such as keyboard, mouse, printer, network card, among others.

Peripherals use a driver or controller and are developed by the manufacturers of equipment. We find different operating systems such as Windows, Linux, macOS, in their different versions. Phones and tablets also have an operating system.

Among the tasks that the operating system performs, in particular, it deals with managing the memory of our system and the loading of the different programs, for this each program has a priority or hierarchy for proper execution.

The operating system also takes care of running processes. Program loading in memory is important, if it is not loaded in memory our program simply “does not run”.

We can distinguish two main types of processes:

In the foreground: they require user interaction, in the case of a web browser, a text editor, an image design program.
Background: These are those programs that do not require the user and usually do not have a graphical interface or “screen”. An example of this type of process is the anti-virus.

Leave a Comment