3.3.2 Outline the functions of operating systems.
Teaching Note:
Functions include: communicating with peripherals; coordinating
concurrent processing of jobs; memory management, resource
monitoring, accounting and security; program and data management;
providing appropriate user interfaces.
Sample Question:
State two functions of an operating system, other than to control the user interface. [2 marks]
JSR Notes:
What you need to do here is break down, and organize somehow, in a way that makes sense to you, all the most important things that an operating system does. And basically, an operating system does everything the computer does besides what specific applications do. In terms of what all this entails, either the teaching note and the text pages both may work for you. For me, I'd organize the features this way:
- management of physical shared resources: primarily processing (CPU, GPU etc.) and memory, plus others, like printers
- management of programs and the data they work with (i.e. running applications and their files)
- user interface (the Mac Finder, or Windows Explorer)
- security, including accounts
There are more details on all of these in the text, they are just organized a bit differently.