Operating systems (OS) are a collection of integrated programs that control computer resources and operations. The OS is not visible to the user, however it provides services that software can make hardware and software more usable.

This is an great site essential operation system feature. The OS must be able to organize the contents of files in order to increase speed, reliability and storage efficiency. This structure is called the file system. It allows files to have names and attributes, and to be organized in directories or folders that form a directory tree.

The majority of computers are equipped with a range of hardware devices, such as printers, keyboards, mice and other peripherals. These devices depend on the driver software of the device to communicate with the operating system. The operating system installs and configures these drivers to provide the correct service to applications. It also hides hardware information from the user so that they are able to interact with their system without knowing the detailed hardware configuration.

Process Management

OSs monitor the applications running on a PC and decide how much time each application should receive when it is multitasking. It also manages interruptions applications cause to get a processor’s attention and ensures that there’s enough memory for the application to finish its work without interfering with other processes.

Operating systems also perform other functions in connection with the overall performance of the computer. For example they manage the primary memory, which includes large word or bytes arrays with an address for each. The OS will track the amount of bytes used by various applications and shift, delete, or reorganize these bytes to free space.