An operating system (OS) is software that manages computer hardware, and software resources, and provides various services for computer programs. In short, it is an interface that interacts between the end user and the internal hardware of the computer. It will be very difficult for a person to interact with the system if there is no operating system as a common person cannot understand the computer language. It performs all the basic tasks like file management, memory management, process management, handling input and output, and controlling peripheral devices such as disk drives and printers.

Architecture

Basically, we will focus on two architectures of the operating system namely: monolithic operating system and microkernel operating system.

Monolithic Operating system

In a monolithic architecture, the entire operating system is implemented as a single, large program running in kernel mode. All operating system services, such as process management, memory management, file systems, and device drivers, are tightly integrated into this single kernel. This means that these services share the same memory space and can directly communicate with each other.

Microkernel Operating system

In a microkernel architecture, the kernel is kept minimal, providing only essential services such as process scheduling, inter-process communication, and memory management. Other services, like file systems, device drivers, and networking, are moved out of the kernel into separate user-space processes called "servers" or "services." These user-space components communicate with the microkernel using well-defined protocols.

Feature of Operating System

• User Interface

• Project Management

• Security and Access Control

• File Management

• Device Management

• Device Management and so on

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