Why do we need it?
In: Technology
An operating system is a piece of software that acts as an interface between the physical hardware and the applications running on the computer.
Initial computers didn’t have operating systems. You would turn the computer on and would be met with a text box (if you have a windows computer, press Ctrl+shift+enter to see what it would have been like), you could insert a disk containing a application into the computer, and then type out a often complex command to get the computer to run the application.
Then Bill Gates came along and had the idea of a application that ran applications, that would run automatically when it turns on. An OS allows there to be a visual interface for the user, rather than a single command line text prompt. You have icons to represent running programs instead of long commands.
An OS can also act as a central manager for your computer. It can clean up files, fix your computer and run anti-virus checks. It also stops the user from doing potentially harmful things to the computer, such as deleting important files. It also controls what applications can do what, you don’t want a calculator accessing your camera.
Most importantly, an OS allows for a computer to appear to do more than one thing at a time. Before OS, computers could only run the program that was selected. What an OS can do is give one program a bit of time to run, then give the other program time. It does it so fast that it seems that they’re running at the same time. It is how your able to have music running in the background as you scroll Reddit, or use multiple windows on a computer. (This is how Windows got its name, from this ability to have applications run in different windows, it was that revolutionary)
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