An operating system is nothing but a software which manages hardware resources and provides a common interface between other software applications. For an application to run on a computing device, an OS has to be preinstalled on it in order to act as a bridge between the hardware and software.
Although the first operating system known as the OS/360 was introduced in 1966 by IBM, there have been a number of advancements since then in terms of management, speed of processing and capacity of an OS. Some of the modern day Operating Systems include, Windows, Android, Linux, Unix and Apple's iOS. A few of these were developed by software development companies whereas the others were developed over a long period of time by software experts as an open source development platform.
With the latest devices and gadgets coming up in the computing industry, operating systems have to be modified to meet their needs and requirements without making them slow or bulky in operation. The main features which make a good operating system are:
• Good Memory Management: One of the most important responsibilities of an OS, memory management deals with allocating the right amount of memory to different applications keeping a buffer for the prospect of a new task. This makes the user experience worthy.
• Proper Job Scheduling: This activity decides when a process should be allocated the resources it has asked for. The types of scheduling include Round Robin scheduling, shortest job first and priority scheduling.
• Optimum file Management System: It is the method or system an OS deploys to manage files on a computer. A good OS will store the names of all the files with their accurate addresses, control access rights on files, and provide simple yet fast read and write algorithms with the device manager.
• Efficient Thread Management: Every Process or application is comprised of one or more threads, where each thread depicts a path of execution. The better the Virtual memory of the device the better will be the thread processing capacity.
Different OSs have varied properties. Some have better scheduling with poor thread management whereas other have great file management but poor virtual memory making the OS heavy and slow at times.
At the end, it all depends on the main component of an OS known as the kernel, as operating systems tasks are performed in different manner by different kernels.
While monolithic kernels uses the same address same for computational purposes to increase the performance parameter, microkernels uses user space for executing most of the operating system services. Also, kernel should ideally be as small as possible while providing all the required services required by other parts of an Operating System and applications.
Author Resource:
Nick Thomas is the author of this article. He has been writing articles on warehousing management for companies like Q3 Technologies. Moreover, he has been providing useful content writing material related to custom software development .
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