Higher National Certificate in Computing: Operating Systems Report

This report, prepared for ACME Training, provides a comprehensive overview of operating systems, exploring their key features and services. It begins by categorizing different operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android, and their respective purposes and hardware requirements. The report then delves into the architectural aspects of operating systems, highlighting features like resource allocation, error handling, and memory management. A significant portion of the report analyzes the services offered by operating systems, specifically in terms of user interaction, memory management, file management, and hardware support. The report covers services such as program execution, user interfaces (CLI, GUI), file system manipulation, I/O operations, and resource allocation. Furthermore, it examines error detection, security measures, and accounting services. The report is well-structured, providing a clear understanding of how operating systems function and the critical role they play in modern computing.

Running head: KEY FEATURES AND SERVICES OF OPERATING SYSTEMS
Key Features and Services of Operating Systems
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1KEY FEATURES AND SERVICES OF OPERATING SYSTEMS
Table of Contents
Range of different operating systems.........................................................................................2
Key Features associated with architecture of an operating system............................................2
Analysis of services provided by an operating system in regards to user interaction, memory
management, file management and hardware support...............................................................4
References..................................................................................................................................6

2KEY FEATURES AND SERVICES OF OPERATING SYSTEMS
Range of different operating systems
Different operating systems are meant to run on different types of systems that are
meant to run different applications (Bach 2018). As an example, the Windows and Linux
operating systems are meant to be run on desktop PCs and servers whereas the iOS or iPhone
Operating Systems and Android are meant to be run on smartphones.
Again among the Windows operating systems there can exist different versions such
as Windows 10 Home for everyday users, Windows 10 Pro for the users using the OS to
conduct corporate tasks and then there is Windows Server 2019 meant to be used in rack
mounted servers for data centers and supermarkets.
When it comes to Linux, there are several versions for the use of everyday users like
Ubuntu and Fedora while the Kali Linux of the Debian branch can be used for penetration
testing and conducting hacking attacks on vulnerable systems.
Key Features associated with architecture of an operating system
The key features that are found to be associated with operating systems in general are:
 Allocation of resources
 Allows access to disks and other features like device drivers, file systems and
Network Security
 Availability of different modes like supervisory and protected modes
 Detection and Handling of Errors
 Execution of program applications
 Handling of I/O specific operations
 File System manipulation
 Memory management and multitasking through virtual memory

3KEY FEATURES AND SERVICES OF OPERATING SYSTEMS
 Protection of Information and Resources
The different layers of a computer or smartphone are applications, operating systems and
hardware systems (Androulaki et al, 2015). Here the operating systems coordinates the
services of the hardware and so that they can be efficiently used by the applications. At the
heart of the operating systems, there is the Kernel which manages the various
communications among the hardware and the software and is also responsible for many of the
scheduling tasks.
The above listed features are provided by OS whenever the resources are required by a
specific program. The OS again de-allocates these resources upon termination of that
program. Through device drivers the OS presents a software interface for managing the
hardware equipment (Ziegler, Peissner and Janssen 2018). The file system helps the user to
easily traverse through the file directory.
The different usage modes are supervisory and protected modes, out of which the
supervisory mode can be the kernel while the protected mode can be the user mode. The
hardware prevents the supervisor mode from being tampered by the user. The compilers and
editors run in the user mode. Errors can lead to total system malfunctions which makes it
critical to detect and handle errors which is why operating systems continuously monitors the
systems. Execution of program applications is the key feature that helps users to utilize their
hardware resources while network security guards the applications from common threats of
the network. The memory area in the Kernel I/O subsystem acts as the buffer for storing data
as they are transferred from one device to another or in a single device (Weiser and Werner
2017). With a protected memory operating systems can guard against several types of errors

4KEY FEATURES AND SERVICES OF OPERATING SYSTEMS
related to hardware applications. The easy access to file system by OS helps users to
manipulate the file system as and when needed. The memory management of operating
systems is conducted through paged allocation of the primary memory of the computer into
memory units of fixed sizes known as page frames and the virtual address space of programs
into pages of same sizes. Protection of information and resources deals with protecting
computer equipment like CPU, primary memory, secondary memory, software programs and
the data stored within the computer. This involves protecting the system from being accessed
by unauthorized users.
Analysis of services provided by an operating system in regards to user
interaction, memory management, file management and hardware support
The usual services provided by the operating systems are execution of programs, user
interface, file systems, I/O (input and output) operations, communications, allocation of
resources, detection of errors, providing protection and security from various threats and
accounting.
While executing programs the various activities need to be loaded into the memory
for running it. The program needs to stop executing either normally or abruptly. The user
interfaces of the operating systems generally include command line interface (CLI), batch
based interface (BI) and Graphical User Interface (GUI) (Joo 2017). Operating systems are
capable of loading programs to memory and execute programs where programs must
complete normally, abruptly and forcefully. The programs need to be read and also should be
writeable on different files and directories like Program Files. Programs that are under
execution may require input and output or I/O operations based on inputs from I/O devices
(James 2016). To ensure the I/O services are conducted efficiently and prevent manipulation
the OS protects governing of I/O devices from user access (Khoroshilov, Kuliamin and

5KEY FEATURES AND SERVICES OF OPERATING SYSTEMS
Petrenko 2017). The File System provided by operating systems enables users to easily create
and delete specific files. The OS needs to ensure information is communicated to other
processes in the same computer or between different computers. Allocation of hardware
resources like CPU, memory, storage and I/O are another important service provided by
operating systems (Golchin, Sinha and West 2019). Error detection can occur in both the
above mentioned hardware and in user programs and are dealt with accordingly by the OS.
The Accounting service of an OS keeps track of the resources that a user makes use of for
purposes of accounting and statistics. Current operating systems come with credible security
and protection features which involves authenticating users before granting access.

6KEY FEATURES AND SERVICES OF OPERATING SYSTEMS
References
Androulaki, E., Barger, A., Bortnikov, V., Cachin, C., Christidis, K., De Caro, A., Enyeart,
D., Ferris, C., Laventman, G., Manevich, Y. and Muralidharan, S., 2018, April. Hyperledger
fabric: a distributed operating system for permissioned blockchains. In Proceedings of the
Thirteenth EuroSys Conference (pp. 1-15).
Bach, M.J., 2018. The design of the UNIX operating system.
Golchin, A., Sinha, S. and West, R., 2019. Boomerang: Real-Time I/O Meets Legacy
Systems. arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.06807.
James, A., 2016. Input and Output Optimization in Linux for Appropriate Resource
Allocation and Management.
Joo, H., 2017. A study on understanding of UI and UX, and understanding of design
according to user interface change. International Journal of Applied Engineering
Research, 12(20), pp.9931-9935.
Khoroshilov, A.V., Kuliamin, V.V. and Petrenko, A.K., 2017. Verification of Operating
System Components. System Informatics, (10), pp.11-22.
Weiser, S. and Werner, M., 2017, March. Sgxio: Generic trusted i/o path for intel sgx.
In Proceedings of the Seventh ACM on Conference on Data and Application Security and
Privacy (pp. 261-268).
Ziegler, D., Peissner, M. and Janssen, D., 2018. Model-with-Example: Model-Based
Development of Polymorphic User Interfaces. Mensch und Computer 2018-Tagungsband.