Operating system concepts

 

                An operating system is the core software that manages the hardware and software resources such things as the processor, memory, disk space.

 

The operating system's tasks, in the most general sense, fall into seven categories:

•     Kernel management   
•     Processor management
•     Memory management
•     Device management
•     Storage management
•     Application interface
•     User interface

  
In simple terms when user working on a word processing application issues a print,Operating system dispatches the commands to the hardware [printer],which prints the datasheet.so we  can say that operating system  is an intermediate layer between user application and system hardware.Operating system major components consist of program execution,interrupts,multi tasking,user interface and kernel.


Thus An operating system is the kernel plus applications that enable users to get something done (i.e compiler, text editor, window manager, etc)