What Are The Three Main Purposes Of The Operating System?

Three main purposes of operating system are as follows :

1) Emulating the machine hardware and bringing it in a format that can be manipulated and understood by the user.

2) Helping the user interface with the machine hardware through either feeding commands by a keyboard or an input device or by directly interacting with it through a Graphical user interface.

3) Operating systems integrate a system's devices into a single platform.

Without operating systems just look at computers as big boxes. Only experienced users could use the DOS interface (white text on black background, sort of like hacking you see in movies) to carry out simple tasks.

At the simplest level, an operating system does two things:

1. It manages the hardware and software resources of the system. In a desktop computer, these resources include such things as the processor, memory, disk space, etc. (On a cell phone, they include the keypad, the screen, the address book, the phone dialer, the battery and the network connection.)

2. It provides a stable, consistent way for applications to deal with the hardware without having to know all the details of the hardware.

The most important program that runs on a computer. Every general-purpose computer must have an operating system to run other programs. Operating systems perform basic tasks, such as recognizing input from the keyboard, sending output to the display screen, keeping track of files and directories on the disk, and controlling peripheral devices such as disk drives and printers.

For large systems, the operating system has even greater responsibilities and powers. It is like a traffic cop -- it makes sure that different programs and users running at the same time do not interfere with each other. The operating system is also responsible for security, ensuring that unauthorized users do not access the system.

Operating systems can be classified as follows:
# multi-user : Allows two or more users to run programs at the same time. Some operating systems permit hundreds or even thousands of concurrent users.
# multiprocessing : Supports running a program on more than one CPU.
# multitasking : Allows more than one program to run concurrently.
# multithreading : Allows different parts of a single program to run concurrently.
# real time: Responds to input instantly. General-purpose operating systems, such as DOS and UNIX, are not real-time.

Operating systems provide a software platform on top of which other programs, called application programs, can run. The application programs must be written to run on top of a particular operating system. Your choice of operating system, therefore, determines to a great extent the applications you can run. For PCs, the most popular operating systems are DOS, OS/2, and Windows, but others are available, such as Linux.

As a user, you normally interact with the operating system through a set of commands. For example, the DOS operating system contains commands such as COPY and RENAME for copying files and changing the names of files, respectively. The commands are accepted and executed by a part of the operating system called the command processor or command line interpreter. Graphical user interfaces allow you to enter commands by pointing and clicking at objects that appear on the screen.

If you have got a computer then you'll be using operating system to operate your computer. But what operating system is? Operating System (OS) is a set of software programs that are used for organizing and controlling the hardware and software resources of a computer. Keyboard, mouse, printers, digital camera, scanner, monitor etc are hardware resources of a computer while internet explorer, Microsoft office, programming and graphics applications are the software resources of a computer.    The Operating system receives the user requests and then takes appropriate action on it. The user can't access directly the resources of a computer. A user doesn't need to know how printer is working and how it's printing the pages. The user has just to send the request for printing.  The Operating system receives the user request and takes appropriate action on it, i.e. If the printer is powered OFF or if printer is already busy in printing pages of some other user it notifies the user.    Similarly when a user is ending graphics data to screen it's actually operating system that displays data or graphics on the screen. User actually request Operating system to display data on the monitor screen.  Operating also manages the memory of a computer, i.e. It keeps a record that where applications reside in a memory.

The primary purpose of an operating system are as follow:
1. Program execution
2. Handling input/output operations.
3. Manipulation of file system
4. Error detection and handling
5. Resource allocation
6. Accounting
7. Information and resources protection

• What is the primary purpose of the widows 7 operating system?

To allow people to use computer

It's the interface between you (and the software you want to run) and the hardware. The middle man, so to speak

The most primary purpose is to input and output data on and off the computer system and to make an interface for communication between system and user.

An operating system is a program that works as mediator between a computer user and the hardware. The main and foremost purpose of an operating system is to offer an atmosphere in which a user can execute programs. The chief goal of an operating system is thus to make the computer system suitable and convenient to use. Operating system exists because they are supposed to make it easier to compute with them than without them. This view is particularly clear when we look at operating systems for small personal computers. A secondary goal is to use computer hardware in efficient manner. Currently time shared and multiprogram systems are used.

The operating system controls and coordinates the use of the hardware among the variety of applications programs for the different users. An Operating system is parallel to "government". Like a government operating system performs no function by itself. It basically provides an atmosphere within which other programs can do constructive work. We can inspect an operating system as "resource allocator". The operating system must make a decision which requests are allocated resources to control and operate the computer system efficiently and fairly. A slightly different view of an operating system focuses on the need to control the various I/O devices and user programs. So an operating system also works as a "control program". A control program controls the execution of user programs to avoid errors and offensive use of computer. It is particularly concerned with the operation and control of I/O devices.

Three main purposes

Windows OS have no objectives apart from making money and they are really useless!!!

1)Shared Resources
2)Device Controller
3)Resource Allocator

Operating system is used to communicate with computers. Through this a man can control all operations related to hardware and software.

Purpose of o.s.
1.the o.s. Attempts to schedule computational activities to ensure good performance of the computing system.
2. It provides convenient environment  for the development & execution of the programs.

1) Its provide the user friendly environment.
2) An OS manage the hardware & software resources.

Consider the various definations  of operating system.consider whether the operating system should include applications such as web browsers and mail programss. Argue both it should and that it should not and sopport your answer

1)provides an enviroment in wich a user can execute programs.

2)to make the computer sysem convinent to use

3)to use the computer hardware in efficient manner