Yet another seminar round up for Wizards of OS I and II! This interesting seminar was hosted by Mr. Soo Yuen Jien and it was split into two sessions. During the first part, Mr. Soo loaned 4 laptops with different operating system for us to try on them. He also got 3 different OS enthusiasts to share their experience and knowledge with OS like Windows 7, Mac and Ubuntu with us; while Mr. Soo himself introduced the Solaris OS. I believe all of us had enjoyed the first introductory part and discovered different fun and unique functions of the various OS. I’m a Microsoft Windows user and have only tried using Linux before attending this seminar. Therefore it was an eye opener to me and allows me to have a better understanding of different OS. After the first hands-on and sharing session, we had another part of the seminar to understand how does an OS work and the underlying structure of it.
Below is a simple graphical interpretation of OS:
As you can see, OS serves as a “middleman” in between a mixture of PC applications and devices. With this interface, full utilization of the computer can be achieved as a whole. We need this “middleman” because the underlying structure of computer hardware is best to be hidden from the computer users.
Take a look at this picture! OS is sitting on top of the hardware to work as an interface between the hardware and the user applications.
OK! So basically, what OS really does is ..
1. Abstraction
- Hide low level details
- Provide simple interface
- Manage hardware resources
- Arbitrate conflicting requests
3. Control
- Prevent errors and improper use
- Security and protection
Generally, OS can be classified as follows:
- Multi-user : Allows two or more users to run programs concurrently
- 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. The general-purpose OS, such as DOS and UNIX, are not real-time.
Besides, Mr. Soo gave an introduction of different OS in the current market and how did they come about from their very first version of production. Below is the timeline from different making of OS editions.
· Microsoft Windows family
Windows logo
Timeline structure
· Unix and Unix-like operating systems
- Linux: Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu
- BSD: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD
- Sun Solaris
Unix Logo
Family tree (I know.. it’s a lot!)
Unix-like OS logos
· Mac OS Family
Latest Mac OS
Timeline structure
To sum up, this seminar is beneficial to those who did not know things like “why is my hard disk noisy when I try to load a game” and of course to those who are enthusiastic with computer’s underlying organization and structure. Also, this is a prologue to the module CS2106: Introduction to Operating Systems, which by now have definitely motivated me and I am looking forward to taking this module in the upcoming year.
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