Side comment: Do you ever stop and think about the work of a programmer back in those days? Programs were written in punch cards! =O There was no layer of abstraction between the running program and the actual hardware. If you wanted to execute the same program on a different computer model, programmers would need to write the whole program again because the hardware was configured in a different way. That means a program could run on one and only one computer model. In the old days (1940's-50's) programs were written to run on specific machines. Nowadays any given program can worry only about executing its core features and leave all basic system functionalities to the OS. OSs were created to simplify the use of computers.
It will manage crucial basic tasks such as file management, memory management, process management, input-output management, and controlling peripheral devices. You can think about an OS as an "intermediary" program that stands between your computer and all other programs you run on it. "An operating system (OS) is software system that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs".
Hi everyone! In this handbook I'm going to give a brief introduction to operating systems and compare the three main OSs that are out there nowadays.įirst we're going to review what an OS is and little history about them.