The operating system is the basis for other application software to run. What is an operating system?

Simply understand that the operating system is the intermediary between a person and computer hardware. To use an analogy, a machine without an operating system is like a useless brick, while a machine with an operating system is a playable brick. (Recommended learning: phpstorm)

The operating system, the English name Operating System, referred to as OS, is an essential basic system software in the computer system. It is necessary for application running and user operations. The basic environment support of the equipment is the core of the computer system. It is a system program software used to transfer information between the user and the computer system hardware.

For example: after receiving the information input by the user, the operating system will pass it to the computer system hardware core for processing, and then return the processing results of the computer system hardware to the user.

The role of the operating system is to manage and control the hardware and software resources in the computer system. For example, it is responsible for directly managing various hardware resources of the computer system, such as the management of CPU, memory, disk, etc., and at the same time Manage system resource supply and demand priorities.

The operating system can also control the input and output of the device, operate the network, and manage the file system.

At the same time, it is also responsible for the management of various software resources in the computer system. For example, the installation of various application software, operating environment settings, etc. The figure below gives a schematic diagram of the relationship between the operating system, computer hardware and software.

Figure - Schematic diagram of the relationship between the operating system and computer software and hardware

The following figure is a schematic diagram for a simple understanding of the role of the operating system. A window for human-computer interaction (how you operate a computer).

Figure - Schematic diagram of operating system functions

Currently a common operating system on PC (Intel x86 series) computers There are Windows, Linux, DOS, Unix, etc. Mac OS is a dedicated operating system for Apple's Macintosh machines. In essence, Mac OS is also a variant of UNIX.

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