Operating Systems for ICT.

1. Computer Operating Systems By Michael Moore

2. What is an Operating System? An operating system is the set of programs that manage and control the computer hardware resources on the computer and provides services to run application software. The OS is the most important software on the computer, without it the computer will not run as well and the user will not be able to run any program on the computer.Examples of the most popular operating systems include Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, and Android.

4. File Management

5. User Interface

6. Memory Management

8. File Management The file management organises the users documents and programmes in to a well organised filing system. Whenever a programme is downloaded or a document has been written, it will be stored in to your file management after chosing where you want to save it, for example ‘My Documents’. The file management will hold the hard drive which contains most fo the computers memory space/disk space and will allow the user to look at how much space has been used and how much is left.

9. User Interface A user interface is usually the graphically user interface (GUI) but is a type of user interface which allows users to interact with electronic devices such as computers, tablets, gaming devices, portable media devices and MP3 players. The GUI will contain various icons on the interface which will allow the user to interact with the device by clicking the icons, like on a computer it will load a programme up such as a word document or a game. User interfaces today such as the Windows 7 interface has incredible advantages and looks truly amazing. It makes the interface look more interesting.

10. Memory Management The memory manager in an operating system implements virtual memory and provides a core set of services such as memory mapped files, copy-on-write memory, large memory support, and underlying support for the cache manager.Virtual memory is a memory management technique developed for multitasking kernels (bridge between applications and the actual data processing done at the hardware level in the operating systems). This technique virtualizes a computer architecture’s various forms of computer data storage, like RAM, allowing a program to be designed as though there is only one kind of memory, ‘virtual’ memory.About memory management on Windows; Each process on 32-bit windows has its own virtual address space that enables addressing up to 4 gigabytes of memory.

11. DeviceManagement The device management is the control panel applet on any operating system which allows the user to view and control the hardware that has been inserted or installed on to the computer. When a piece of device has been recognised, a bubble will normally come up saying something has been connected to the computer. The user will be able to use the device now. Examples of devices are keyboards, mice, floppy disks, network adapters, momitors, speakers, USB memory cards and others. The user can also connect a seperate hard drive so more memory can be stored on to the computer and can be taken any where because the hard drive will be portable.