What are the functions of an Operating System?

By | March 19, 2021

In this article we will know What are the functions of an Operating System in terms of Process Management, Memory Management, File Management, Security Management and I/O Management.

What are the functions of an Operating System

What is and Operating System?

Operating System is the main concept of the computer. It brings user and computer at a common platform there communicate with each other.

The computer being a machine can’t d do anything on its own. It requires specific instructions to the computer on how to perform each and every task. Further, the instructions are to be concerted in a language, which the Machine understands. It means that users cannot communicate with the computer directly. Thus, you required to communicate between user and hardware (all computer resources).

What is Operating System and Its Different Types?

The operating system acts as an interface The computer interprets the instruction given by the user with the help of an operating system. It is the master’s program, which makes your PC alive and helps you run different applications.
The operating system acts as a central coordinator between hardware and software. Hardware provides a user basic physical resource to work upon. The utility software empowers the user to perform a variety of functions on the computer like solving problems, creating documents, playing games, etc.

What are the functions of an Operating System Computer?

The Functions of an Operating System mainly defined on five categories. They are Process Management, File Management, Memory Management, I/O device Management and security management.

Function Of Operating system
  1. Process Management

Process Management in Operating system used to manage of CPU. The process management used to defined the process of any programs to create, schedule, and terminate the process used by the CPU. Any process or execution create by the CPU that called a child processor.

The Operating system takes care of the CPU to execute or run the different processes. When the CPU is free Operating system selects the process from Job schedule and assigned it to a processor to execute the programs. when the process of assigned job schedule will complete then the operating system again assigned the programs for executions

A CPU used the CPU schedule technique to execute the queue or scheduled programs. CPU works FCFS (First Come and First Search), SJF (Search Job First) priority, and round-robin. In the Process Management function, OS assigned the process to the processor to execute any programs. After Finish the Process Operating system deallocates the processor if it is not required.

2. File Management System

A file Management system is one of the best functions of an Operating system that used to manage the same type or different types of the file system. The operating system used secondary Memory to store information such as SSD, HDD, USB drive, etc.

File Management System can contain a different type of File such as Report, Video, Audio, Directory subdirectory, Folder, Sub-folder, etc. The Operating system does the following activity for File management.

  • Creating and Deleting the Directory.
  • Creating and Deleting the files.
  • Operating System Information.
  • FAT (File Allocation Table) store general information of file such as size, Text, Binary, access mode, sequence index etc.
  • OS Keep care the file are open with proper access rights.

3. Memory Management

Memory Management is one of the main functions of the Operating system to Manage Memory address allocations. Operating system used to Managed Primary and secondary memory to Operate the computer. The main memory is direct access by the CPU to a program to must execute it must begin main Memory.

An Operating system does following activity for Memory Management

  • keeps track of primary memory using free space Management.
  • Allocate the Memory when it required.
  • Deallocate the Memory when a process terminated or the same memory area allocated to another process.

4. I/O Device Management Function

Input-output Device Management Function use by Operating system to manage I/O activity that generated by the user. Operating system accepts the input from input device store it in main memory and asked processor to execute it and finally provide the result to Output Devices.

Operating system control all I/O devices attached to computer with help of small software called Device Drivers. Operating system track all I/O devices via Input/output controller.

5. Security Management

Security Management is one of the Keys to the management of any Operating system because there are various virus threads which an Interface with the normal Operation to a computer can be very harmful result may be system crash or loss of Data.

OS of a computer has a various number of inbuilt tools to control Security management of Operating system including the virus scanning utility and settings of Firewall to block and allow network activity.

OS also help to prevent unauthorized access of data or program by the use of Operating system activity such as Login User name and Password.

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