Operating System : Purpose, Tasks and Services

Purpose of an Operating System

The two main purposes to develop on an Operating System are:

· An Operating system can have power over the usage and allocation of the various computer resources.

· An Operating system serves as an interface between the programmer and computer hardware. This makes it easy for coding, creating and debugging of the programs required for applications.

Tasks supported by an Operating System

The Operating System must maintain the tasks such as:

· Create and modify the program and data file with help of an editor.

· Compiler must be accessible in order to decipher the user programs from high level language to machine language.

· Offer a loader program to shift the compiled program to the memory of the computer for further executions.

· Offer routines to manage the details of I/O programming.

Operating system Services

Program Execution – Program is loaded into memory and then executed. The execution must be ended normally or abnormally.

I/O operation – I/O refers to any file or I/O device. The operating system must offer any I/O device to run a program.

File system manipulation – Program has to either write or read a file. The program can operate on the file as the permission is granted by the operating system.

Communication – Some time is required for the data to be transferred between two processes. Both processes are either on a single computer or on two different computers which is connected through a computer network. There are two methods for communication – shared memory and memory passing.

Error detection – An error can arise in I/O device, CPU, or in the memory hardware. The operating system should be alert regarding the errors that occur and must take apt act for correction.

Kernel

Kernel is a part of the operating system which is present in the memory. Kernel is also known as the nucleus of the operating system. This part of the operating system contains the functions that are frequently used.