Operating Systems - Introduction
Introduction Operating system placement An operating system (OS) is a software that manages hardware and software resources and provide common services for computer programs. Operating systems performs all the basic tasks of the computer like process management, memory management, file management, handling input and output and controlling peripheral devices such as disk drives and printers. Before go into further details, let's look into history of operating systems. History The First Generation (1945–55) Vacuum Tubes and Plugboards The electronic computers first introduced in 1940s were run without any operating systems. They were designed, built, programmed, operated and maintained by a single group of people. They were programmed in absolute machine language, the basic functions of the machine were controlled usin...