Module 1 Introduction

An operating system manages memory, application programs, utilities, user process requests, and computer hardware to provide services to system users.  The operating system allows users to communicate with the computer without knowing how to speak the computer's language. Without some sort of operating system, a computer is useless to most users. Many different operating systems have been developed to serve groups of users and computer hardware as it has evolved.

The computer's operating system (often known as the OS) manages all of the software and hardware on the computer. Generally, several different computer programs run at the same time on a computer.  Since they each access to your computer's central processing unit (CPU), memory, and storage, the operating system coordinates so that each program gets the resources needed.

Since the early 1950's, operating systems have evolved.  Initially, a human operator was needed to manually manipulate hardware.  Since that time hardware capabilities in storage, memory, processor and input/output devices  have improved to allow us to where we are now with Windows, Android, Unix, Linus, Solaris, IOS and Mac operating systems.

In module 1, we will look at the general concepts of computer hardware, such as processors, memory, input, output. We will also consider the evolution of operating systems and the expectation of how an operating system should perform in a general sense.

It is important to understand the general concepts in order to be able to effectively select and integrate Operating System solutions.