What is a computer's operating system?

Operating System (OS) is a computer program that manages and controls computer hardware and software resources. It is the most basic system software that runs directly on "bare metal". Any other software must be supported by the operating system. to run.

#The operating system is the interface between the user and the computer, and it is also the interface between the computer hardware and other software. The functions of the operating system include managing the hardware, software and data resources of the computer system, controlling program operation, improving the human-computer interface, providing support for other application software, maximizing all resources of the computer system, and providing various forms of user interfaces , so that users have a good working environment, and provide necessary services and corresponding interfaces for the development of other software.

In fact, users do not need to contact the operating system. The operating system manages the computer hardware resources and allocates resources according to the resource requests of the application, such as dividing CPU time, opening up memory space, calling printers, etc. .

Extended information:

Typical system

Operating system UNIX

UNIX is a powerful multi- User, multi-tasking operating system supports multiple processor architectures. According to the classification of operating systems, it is a time-sharing operating system. UNIX was first developed by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie in 1969 at AT&T's Bell Labs in the United States.

Unix-like (Unix-like) operating system refers to various traditional Unix and various systems similar to traditional Unix. Although some of them are free software and some are commercial software, they all inherit the characteristics of the original UNIX to a considerable extent, have many similarities, and all comply with POSIX specifications to a certain extent. Unix-like systems can run on a wide range of processor architectures and are highly used on server systems, such as workstations in colleges and universities or engineering applications.

Operating system Linux

The Linux-based operating system is a multi-user, multi-tasking operating system launched in 1991 in the 20th century. It is fully compatible with UNIX. Linux was originally an operating system kernel program developed on the basis of UNIX by Linus Torvalds, a computer science student at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Linux was designed to be used more effectively on Intel microprocessors. It was later released under the GNU General Public License at the suggestion of Richard Stallman and became a free software Unix variant. Its biggest feature is that it is a free and open source operating system with open source code, and its kernel source code can be freely disseminated.

After several years of hard work, the free and open source Linux system has gradually encroached on the professional fields of previous proprietary software. For example, the former computer animation computing giant ─ SGI's IRIX system has been designed by the Linux family and the Bell Labs R&D team. Plan 9 and the Inferno system were replaced, both for distributed expression environments. Unlike other Unix systems, they choose to come with their own graphical user interface. Plan 9 was not originally popular because it was not free software when it was first launched. Linux has various distributions, usually GNU/Linux, such as Debian (and its derivative systems Ubuntu, Linux Mint), Fedora, openSUSE, etc. As a personal computer operating system or server operating system, Linux distribution has become the mainstream operating system on servers.

Operating system Mac OS X

Mac OS is an operating system that runs on Apple's Macintosh series computers. Mac OS was the first commercially successful graphical user interface. The Macintosh group included Bill Atkinson, Jef Raskin, and Andy Hertzfeld. Mac OS X was first launched in stores in 2001. It consists of two main parts: Darwin, which is a Unix-like open source environment based on BSD original code and Mach microkernel.

The above is the detailed content of What is a computer's operating system?. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!