What is an Operating system on a computer?

Answer 1

An operating system, of OS for short, is the software that manages a computer's hardware and software resources and provides common services. Some popular operating systems are Android, Microsoft Windows and iOS.

Answer 2

1. Operating System - The software that supports a computer's basic functions, such as scheduling tasks, executing applications, receiving input, displaying and communicating output to screen or print, and controlling peripherals.


2. The operating environment of the computer - Supercomputer, Mainframe, Server, Desktop, Workstation, Handheld, Real time, Embedded system, Smart card operating system, Specialized operating system.

Answer 3

Operating system is a computer program managaing all other programs running on that machine, providing API's, managing memory and processes, etc.

By type:

Multi-tasking(capable of running many processes at time)

Single-tasking(only capable of running single task, very old os's did that)

By Kernel type:

Microkernel - kernel with minimum amount of software, only enough to run things.

Monolithic kernel - operating system(kernel) runs in supervised mode, and is the only thing capable of accessing hardware directly, provides system calls so programs run in user mode can communicate with devices.

Hybrid kernel - combining characteristics of microkernel and monolithic kernel, most os's these days have such kernels.

By Family:

Windows NT-based (windows NT, XP, Vista, 7)

Unix-like:

Mac OS X - based on Unix directly

Linux - derivied from linux, but changed a lot since then.

By Purpose:

Real-time operating system - system that must react instantly and very fast(an example would be a computer controlling a factory machine), usually used in embedded devices.

Other - operating systems that don't need to do everything instantly, but instead can take some time to for example launch a program.

It's not the complete list, but I think it's quite robust and covers most important topics.