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10. Features of an operating system (1)

You now have read about the various kinds of operating systems that are part of computers ranging from a humble mobile phone to a mighty supercomputer taking up an entire building.

But they share some common features, some of which are more important than others depending on the type of operating system

Scheduling

The task of handling how active processes are making efficient use of the CPU processing cycles is called scheduling. There are many ways of doing this, which is covered in another mini-website.

Memory Management

The operating system has to make sure that applications are able to run in the amount of memory available and that they do not interfere with one another. There is a separate mini-website on this topic.

Allocation of resources

The operating system will provide a working area for each user. This includes

• Disk space quota for their files ( especially on shared network drives)
• A personal GUI set up for each user (multi-user operating systems)
• Perhaps how many processing cycles they are allowed to use (especially on mainframe)
• How much printer output they are allowed (networked and mainframe)
• How high a priority they can assign to a job (mainframe)

Continued ...