Childhood Safety essays

Childhood Safety essays The operating system , also referred to as the OS, is the most important software on the computer. It is responsible for providing an interface with the hardware, displaying an interface for users to work with, and acting as a base for other software programs to be run on. Without an operating system, a computer would be nearly useless .When a computer first starts, the BIOS (Basic Input Output System is the first thing to load. This BIOS performs several basic tasks, before looking for the Operating System to load. It can be booted from any source - such as a floppy disk or CD-ROM - but it is more commonly found to be on the computers hard drive.Once the Operating System has been located, the kernel of the operating system is usually loaded. The kernel is the core of the operating system and it handles the majority of low-level activities, such as controlling hardware through specific written software known as drivers. The kernel then loads further parts of the operating system as necessary. This includes the user interface (or shell) so that the user can interact with the computer.The shell will usually provide the user with a platform from which they can navigate file systems, run utilities and run applications software. There are four basic types of Operating System: - Batch, Real Time, Interactive, Network Batch systems were the first in existence and can still be found on some mainframes today running batches of jobs. Examples can often be hard to think of, but tasks such as processing tax demands have always been best suited to batch Real Time operating systems need to have a quick response so that data processing can be kept up-to-date and accurate - this if often used in situations such as air flight booking, or it could be embedded in something as precise as a missile. When an operating system relies on a lot of input from the ...