List two main operations of an operating system and explain

List two main operations of an operating system and explain how it provides abstraction.

Solution

The operating system\'s operations include managing communication with computer hardware and handling concurrent demands of other programs that are running. Thw two main operations of an operating system are as follows:

1. Resource Management

Operating System manages all the resources like Memory and Processor and all the Input output Devices that are attached to the System. It will identifies which Operation will the CPU perform in which time and which memory is used by which Programs in which time. Also, which request of the user will be responded by the Input Device and which prgrams will use the Input and Output Devices. So it manages all the Resources that are attached to the Computer System.

2. Storage Management

It controls the all the storage operations means how the data or files will be Stored into the computers and how the Files will be Accessed by the users etc. All the Operations those are Responsible for Storing and Accessing the Files is determined by the it. It also allows Creation of Files, Creation of Directories and Reading and Writing the data of Files and Directories and also Copy the contents of the Files and the Directories from One Place to Another Place.

Operating System provides abstraction in the following way:

It hides the complex computer resources.

As an example, a disk is a complex physical device that allows a system to read and write blocks of data of a kilobyte at a time (or four kilobytes on some newer disks). With each access, the disk must be told the specific physical location on the disk that it should access. This procedure is inconvenient for the typical program that wants to read or store a sequence of bytes. The notion of a file is more convenient for such programs; the operating system allows the program to regard storage on disk as a set of files, each a stream of bytes. The hardware itself is completely unaware of such a thing as a file: It is an abstraction created by the operating system to simplify how a program might deal with a disk.

The file isn\'t the only abstraction provided by an operating system. Other abstractions include the process for a running program, a window for access to a graphical display, or a connectionfor network communication. None of these abstractions has any basis in hard reality. But providing these convenient abstractions frees the programmer from worrying about the details of how the hardware actually works and from negotiating with other programs about what program has which rights.

You can think of an operating system as the adult in the computer, parenting the young user programs. An adult often has to explain events at the kid\'s level using metaphors (those are the abstractions), and the adult often performs tasks that the child can\'t handle on its own (buying a piece of candy).