The operating system is the basic software that manages all of the hardware and other software on a computer. The operating system, also known as the “OS”, interacts with the computer hardware and provides services that applications can use.
What an operating system does
An operating system is the core set of software on a device that supports everything together. Operating systems interact with the hardware on the device. They handle everything from the keyboard and mouse to Wi-Fi radio, storage and display devices. In other words, the operating system handles input and output devices. Operating systems use device drivers written by hardware developers to communicate with their devices.
Operating systems also include many software products, such as common system services, libraries, and application programming interfaces (APIs) that developers can use to write programs that run on the operating system.
The operating system sits between the applications you run and the hardware, using hardware drivers as the interface between them. For example, when an application wants to print something, it transfers that task to the operating system. The operating system sends instructions to the printer, using the printer drivers to send the right signals. The application that prints doesn’t have to worry about what kind of printer you have or understand how it works. The OS handles the details.
The OS also handles multitasking by allocating hardware resources among several running programs. The OS controls which processes are running and allocates them to different CPUs if you have a computer with multiple processors or cores, allowing multiple processes to run in parallel. It also manages the system’s internal memory, allocating memory between running applications.
The operating system is one big piece of software that is responsible for many things. For example, the operating system also controls the files and other resources that programs can access.
Most software applications are written for operating systems, which allows the operating system to do a lot of work. For example, when you run Minecraft, you run it on the operating system. Minecraft doesn’t have to know exactly how each individual hardware component works. Minecraft uses various functions of the operating system, and the operating system translates them into low-level hardware instructions.