Features and services of operating system

Operating system

Operating system acts as an interface between the user and the computer. It is a medium by which both of them communicates with each other. It provides many services to the users for convenience.

Features of operating system

There are many important features of the operating system, some of them are mentioned below:

• It works independently.
• There is no time lagging.
• It fetches instructions form the user and processes it.
• It performs processes sequentially on the basis of their priority.

Services of operating system

Services commonly provided by the operating systems are as follows:

1. Program execution: It is one of the basic services provided by the operating system. It should be capable of loading a program into the memory so that it could be assigned by the scheduler.

   

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   The process should complete its execution or show an error. The states and operation of process have been discussed earlier.
2. Input and output operation: Any running program may require an input or output operation for its entire execution.Without the operating system, user would not be able to directly control the I/O devices which will cause lack of efficiency of the system.
3. Manipulation of the file system: File system requires many operations which would not be possible without the operating system, they are:                                                                           a) Creation and deletion of file.                                                                                       b)Creation and deletion of file directories.                                                                               c)Support for modification of files.                                                                                           d)Storing files in secondary storage.                                                                                 e)Backing up files in storage nonvolatile media.
4. Communication: There may come a situation when one process have to interact with another process for its completion. Such communication may occur in two types:                     a)Between processes running on the same computer.                                                                 b)Between processes running on different computers that are linked in a network.
5. Error detection: Error can occur anywhere such as in the CPU, memory, hardware, I/O devices due to various reasons that includes storage problem, power failure or connection error.

   

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   The operating system should constantly know about the errors occurring so that it could could take appropriate actions regarding the error according to its type. It increases the efficiency of the system and is useful in sharing resources among all.
6. Resource allocation: Resource allocation is necessary when there are multiple users or when there are multiple jobs running at the same time. The operating system manages all the different types of resources that includes: CPU utilization cycle, storage, I/O devices etc.
7. Accounting: The operating system requires accounting to keep track of which user uses which type of computer resources. This feature of the operating system is beneficial for the users who want to reconfigure the system or improve the computing services.
8. Protection: When more than one disjoint processes execute concurrently in a system it would not be possible for one process to interfere with all other processes and proceed to execution. So the operating system ensure the controlled access to system resources.
9. Security: This is one the most beneficial services that is provided by the operating system. The operating system protects the system from unauthorized users by authenticating itself by username and password for the accession of resources. It also provides backup and recovery options in case of system failure.
10. System utilities: Most of the operating system nowadays are supplied with programs that are able to solve common problems or perform basic/common operations such as web browsers, word processor, games, database systems etc.