What is an operating system and its use in the computer world:
Living in the digital era we know the importance of computers and various operating systems in our daily life. Progression will come to halt if we stop using digital services. To run the computer system we need a system software that acts as the interface between the computer and the user and this system software is known as an operating system. The OS helps in managing software resources, computer hardware and various computer programs by providing common services. There is a time-sharing Operating system that provides tasks in order to use the system efficiently, along with which they might include accounting software that helps in cost allocation of the mass storage, printing and processor time and many kinds of resources. The operating system helps as an intermediary among the computer hardware and the programs of computers for many of the hardware functions such as memory allocation and input and output. The operating system is found in devices that deals with computer systems such as mobile phones and the video games which consoles to supercomputers and web browsers.
Well, the desktop operating system that is found to be dominating over the years is Microsoft Windows and its market share is up-to 82.74%. The operating system that ranks 2nd and has a market share of 13.23% is Mac OS by Apple Inc. Varieties of Linux ranks 3rd in the OS chart and has a 1.57% market share.
In the mobile systems, Google Android made its share up-to 70% in year 2017, which were mostly used in smartphones and tablets. From 3rd quarter of data in 2016, it was seen that androids made its way to smartphones at the rate of 87.5 per cent and was on the growth scale with the rate of 10.3 per cent per year. With a 12.1 per cent share in the market, Apple’s IOS kept on decreasing at the rate of 5.2 per cent per year. Other types of operating systems counted 0.3 per cent approximately in the market share. For super commuting and server functions, Linux distributions are mostly used.
History of operating system and beginning of the computer era:
In the beginning computer systems were mostly used to perform certain kind of tasks and also to perform a series of single tasks such as calculations. During 1940’s the digital systems didn’t use operating system for functioning. The systems were programmed by junior wires on board having plugs and the roots is mechanical switches. These were used in military work that is generating ballistics tables for printing the payroll checks that were detected from the punched paper cards. After this the language of computers were developed that is the binary numbers consisting of ‘1’ or ‘0’. In the 1950s Operating system were developed which was able to speed up the processing and can also perform various tasks and programs. The users had to be present at a scheduled time along with their data and programs which were printed on the punched paper cards. The programs then were set to work until the task was completed or crashed. Until the 1960’s complex forms and modern forms of operating system weren’t established. That’s the period when many of the features related to the hardware were added, such as interrupts, run time libraries and parallel processing. Various library functions were added up In the 1980s more of the features were added to the operating systems with a concept similar to the ones used in larger computers. In the later part, developed machines helped in generating code that help in assisting in operations such as input and output of programs. These codes help in converting the inputs into a low-level language that consists of 1 and 0, after processing it again converts low-level language into high-level language that is human understandable form.
Development of operating system by computing hobbyists:
The development of operating systems mainly takes place with the help of computing hobbyists who are more often get engaged in such works. The hobbyists develop codes from new users and also active developers but not totally from the existing codes. Syllable and templeOS are two operating systems which were developed by computing hobbyists. These hobbyists are generally their own developer and they need to interact with small business and also unstructured groups of individuals whose interests align with you.
Types of operating systems:
Well, there are many types of operating systems which are used. It shows how the operating systems have been developed over the years and how the computer system’s era has affected our lives.
Single-tasking and multi-tasking operating system:
Single-tasking operating system executes one task at a time and multitasking operating system performs multiple tasks and uses more than one program to run. This is possible due to time-sharing which helps in allocating time to various functions in order to work efficiently. It has a task scheduling subsystem which is allocated to time periods by time slices which interrupts in a regular time interval. The multi-tasking is divided into two categories that are co-operatives and preemptive type.
Distributed Operating system:
The distributed Operating system makes a group of computer to appear as one. There are distributed computations which are performed on various systems which are then seen as one. So the group of computer systems that has established cooperation among them are known as distributed Operating system.
Embedded operating system:
Embedded computer systems use embedded OS which are specially designed for such purpose that are used to operate machines that use PDAs with less autonomy. Embedded OS can operate over a limited amount of resources. They are very much efficient as per design and are also …