What is an Operating System ?
An operating system (OS) is a set of programs that manages computer hardware resources, and provides common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system. Without an operating system, a user cannot run an application program on their computer, unless the application program is self-booting.
"At the simplest level, an operating system does two things:
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"At the simplest level, an operating system does two things:
- It manages the hardware and software resources of the system. In a desktop computer, these resources include such things as the processor, memory, disk space.
- It provides a stable, consistent way for applications to deal with the hardware without having to know all the details of the hardware.
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