CAS CS 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Nextstep, Loose Coupling, Next
11 Mar 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
An operating system is a program, just like power-point, safari, ie and so on. The operating system (os) is more important than all of the other programs b/c it controls them. It hides the complexities of the hardware from running programs and provides access to that hardware. Os sits between the hardware and everything else (utilities, application programs, and end user) What it isn"t: not the stuff you see on the screen: not windows, or menus, or clicking, these are also just programs on the comp, some os are more integrated with windowing environment than others. Evolution = from the desire to be able to easily switch between programs, no one wanted to waste. Cpu"s valuable time by having it be idle automated ways of switching. It may seem like everything is running simultaneously, but really the cpu can only run one thing at a time!
