What is the difference between single user and multi user systems?

Answer 1

A single user System is a system used by a single user or we can say personal computer, thus all the resources are always available for the user to work on any

project,Surfing the net,making programs using high level languages like C,C# etc.

But the limitation of a single user system is the wastage of CPU & resources ,when

the user is doing nothing on the system.

Multi-user System is intended to use the overall resources to maximum.We can say

a condition in which CPU has no idle time and always busy to execute programs so

frequently that it seems to interact with each user putting some job to do.Complexity increases with regard to multi-user systems because of resource sharing.

Answer 2

A system which is used by a single person, i.e., the entire information of the hard disk only used by only one person is called single user system.

A multi user system can be used by many persons, i.e., the hard disk contents can be used by many persons at the same time is called multi user system.

Answer 3

In single user mode, only the console user may be logged in, though the user can edit files and execute multiple programs simultaneously (multi-tasking in other words).

In full multi-user mode, dozens, hundreds or even thousands of users may be logged into a single Linux machine simultaneously, each user editing files and executing multiple programs simultaneously (each user may run multiple tasks simultaneously). The thousands of logged in users do not all have to be in the same room, city, state or province, nation or even on the same continent (nor even on the same planet for that matter, though a logged in user on Mars may experience some noticeable latency if the server he/she is logged into is on Earth). :)

Answer 4

The central misunderstanding here is "task" and "user". So let us start with that a computer runs one or more "Processes". The Process may be one or more task - or "thread". A "Multitasking" operating system is one that can run multiple processes at the same time. Your computer will not wait while the file is written to the disk, and will then pick up another process. Then while waiting for you to tell what to do, another process and execute in "the background".

Multi-user is where there are multiple users running at the same time on the same computer. On MacOS,Unix and Linux, there will always be at least two users running at the same time: "root" and "user". These have different privileges, and while the "root" can do anything, "user" has restricted capabilities. Windows has tried to implement a similar concept. Since the email and browsing is done by in the"user", it is impossible to install tasks that run as "root" and play around with sensitive files.

Answer 5

A single user system is like a standalone PC. A multiuser system is several PCs or terminals networked to a server or a mainframe.