Chapter 1: Introduction

Operating System Concepts – 10h Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Chapter 1: Introduction

▪ What Operating Systems Do

▪ Computer-System Organization
▪ Computer-System Architecture
▪ Operating-System Operations
▪ Resource Management
▪ Security and Protection
▪ Virtualization
▪ Distributed Systems
▪ Kernel Data Structures
▪ Computing Environments
▪ Free/Libre and Open-Source Operating Systems

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 Objectives

▪ Describe the general organization of a computer system and the role

of interrupts
▪ Describe the components in a modern, multiprocessor computer
system
▪ Illustrate the transition from user mode to kernel mode
▪ Discuss how operating systems are used in various computing
environments
▪ Provide examples of free and open-source operating systems

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 What Does the Term Operating System Mean?

▪ An operating system is “fill in the blanks”

▪ What about:
• Car
• Airplane
• Printer
• Washing Machine
• Toaster
• Compiler
• Etc.

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 What is an Operating System?

▪ A program that acts as an intermediary between a user of a

computer and the computer hardware
▪ Operating system goals:
• Execute user programs and make solving user problems
easier
• Make the computer system convenient to use
• Use the computer hardware in an efficient manner

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 Computer System Structure

▪ Computer system can be divided into four components:

• Hardware – provides basic computing resources
 CPU, memory, I/O devices
• Operating system
 Controls and coordinates use of hardware among various
applications and users
• Application programs – define the ways in which the system
resources are used to solve the computing problems of the users
 Word processors, compilers, web browsers, database systems,
video games
• Users
 People, machines, other computers

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 Abstract View of Components of Computer

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 What Operating Systems Do
▪ Depends on the point of view
▪ Users want convenience, ease of use and good performance
• Don’t care about resource utilization
▪ But shared computer such as mainframe or minicomputer must keep
all users happy
• Operating system is a resource allocator and control program
making efficient use of HW and managing execution of user
programs
▪ Users of dedicate systems such as workstations have dedicated
resources but frequently use shared resources from servers
▪ Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets are resource poor,
optimized for usability and battery life
• Mobile user interfaces such as touch screens, voice recognition
▪ Some computers have little or no user interface, such as embedded
computers in devices and automobiles
• Run primarily without user intervention
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 Defining Operating Systems

▪ Term OS covers many roles

• Because of countless designs and uses of OSes
• Present in toasters through ships, spacecraft, game machines,
TVs and industrial control systems
• Born when fixed use computers for military became more
general purpose and needed resource management and
program control

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 Operating System Definition

▪ No universally accepted definition

▪ “Everything a vendor ships when you order an operating system” is a
good approximation
• But varies enthusiastically
▪ “The one program running at all times on the computer” is the kernel,
part of the operating system
▪ Everything else is either
• A system program (ships with the operating system, but not part of
the kernel) , or
• An application program, all programs not associated with the
operating system
▪ Today’s OSes for general purpose and mobile computing also include
middleware – a set of software frameworks that provide addition services
to application developers such as databases, multimedia, graphics

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 Overview of Computer System Structure

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 Computer System Organization

▪ Computer-system operation
• One or more CPUs, device controllers connect through common
bus providing access to shared memory
• Concurrent execution of CPUs and devices competing for memory
cycles

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 Computer-System Operation

▪ I/O devices and the CPU can execute concurrently

▪ Each device controller is in charge of a particular device type
▪ Each device controller has a local buffer
▪ Each device controller type has an operating system device driver
to manage it
▪ CPU moves data from/to main memory to/from local buffers
▪ I/O is from the device to local buffer of controller
▪ Device controller informs CPU that it has finished its operation by
causing an interrupt

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 Common Functions of Interrupts

▪ Interrupt transfers control to the interrupt service routine

generally, through the interrupt vector, which contains the
addresses of all the service routines
▪ Interrupt architecture must save the address of the interrupted
instruction
▪ A trap or exception is a software-generated interrupt caused
either by an error or a user request
▪ An operating system is interrupt driven
• Denoting a process that is restarted by the occurrence of
an interrupt.

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 Interrupt Timeline

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 Interrupt Handling

▪ The operating system preserves the state of the CPU by

storing the registers and the program counter
▪ Determines which type of interrupt has occurred:
▪ Separate segments of code determine what action should
be taken for each type of interrupt

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 Interrupt-drive I/O Cycle

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 I/O Structure

▪ Two methods for handling I/O

• After I/O starts, control returns to user program only
upon I/O completion
• After I/O starts, control returns to user program without
waiting for I/O completion

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 I/O Structure (Cont.)

▪ After I/O starts, control returns to user program only upon I/O
completion
• Wait instruction idles the CPU until the next interrupt
• Wait loop (contention for memory access)
• At most one I/O request is outstanding at a time, no
simultaneous I/O processing
▪ After I/O starts, control returns to user program without waiting for
I/O completion
• System call – request to the OS to allow user to wait for I/O
completion
• Device-status table contains entry for each I/O device
indicating its type, address, and state
• OS indexes into I/O device table to determine device status
and to modify table entry to include interrupt

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 Storage Structure

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 Storage Structure
▪ Main memory – only large storage media that the CPU can
access directly
• Random access
• Typically volatile
• Typically random-access memory in the form of Dynamic
Random-access Memory (DRAM)
▪ Secondary storage – extension of main memory that provides
large nonvolatile storage capacity

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 Storage Structure (Cont.)
▪ Hard Disk Drives (HDD) – rigid metal or glass platters covered
with magnetic recording material
• Disk surface is logically divided into tracks, which are subdivided
into sectors
• The disk controller determines the logical interaction between
the device and the computer
▪ Non-volatile memory (NVM) devices– faster than hard disks,
nonvolatile
• Various technologies
• Becoming more popular as capacity and performance increases,
price drops

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 Storage Definitions and Notation Review
The basic unit of computer storage is the bit . A bit can contain one of two
values, 0 and 1. All other storage in a computer is based on collections of bits.
Given enough bits, it is amazing how many things a computer can represent:
numbers, letters, images, movies, sounds, documents, and programs, to name
a few. A byte is 8 bits, and on most computers it is the smallest convenient
chunk of storage. For example, most computers don’t have an instruction to
move a bit but do have one to move a byte. A less common term is word,
which is a given computer architecture’s native unit of data. A word is made
up of one or more bytes. For example, a computer that has 64-bit registers and
64-bit memory addressing typically has 64-bit (8-byte) words. A computer
executes many operations in its native word size rather than a byte at a time.

Computer storage, along with most computer throughput, is generally

measured and manipulated in bytes and collections of bytes. A kilobyte , or
KB , is 1,024 bytes; a megabyte , or MB , is 1,0242 bytes; a gigabyte , or GB , is
1,0243 bytes; a terabyte , or TB , is 1,0244 bytes; and a petabyte , or PB , is 1,0245
bytes. Computer manufacturers often round off these numbers and say that
a megabyte is 1 million bytes and a gigabyte is 1 billion bytes. Networking
measurements are an exception to this general rule; they are given in bits
(because networks move data a bit at a time).

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 Storage Hierarchy
▪ Storage systems organized in hierarchy
• Speed
• Cost
• Volatility
▪ Caching – copying information into faster storage system; main
memory can be viewed as a cache for secondary storage
▪ Device Driver for each device controller to manage I/O
• Provides uniform interface between controller and kernel

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 Storage-Device Hierarchy

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 How a Modern Computer Works

A von Neumann architecture

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 Direct Memory Access Structure

▪ Used for high-speed I/O devices able to transmit information

at close to memory speeds
▪ Device controller transfers blocks of data from buffer storage
directly to main memory without CPU intervention
▪ Only one interrupt is generated per block, rather than the one
interrupt per byte

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 Operating-System Operations
▪ Bootstrap program – simple code to initialize the system, load the
kernel
▪ Kernel loads
▪ Starts system daemons (services provided outside of the kernel)
▪ Kernel interrupt driven (hardware and software)
• Hardware interrupt by one of the devices
• Software interrupt (exception or trap):
 Software error (e.g., division by zero)
 Request for operating system service – system call
 Other process problems include infinite loop, processes
modifying each other or the operating system

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 Multiprogramming (Batch system)
▪ Single user cannot always keep CPU and I/O devices busy
▪ Multiprogramming organizes jobs (code and data) so CPU
always has one to execute
▪ A subset of total jobs in system is kept in memory
▪ One job selected and run via job scheduling
▪ When job has to wait (for I/O for example), OS switches to
another job

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 Multitasking (Timesharing)

▪ A logical extension of Batch systems– the CPU switches jobs so frequently

that users can interact with each job while it is running, creating
interactive computing
• Response time should be < 1 second
• Each user has at least one program executing in memory process
• If several jobs ready to run at the same time  CPU scheduling
• If processes don’t fit in memory, swapping moves them in and out to
run
• Virtual memory allows execution of processes not completely in
memory

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 Memory Layout for Multiprogrammed System

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 Dual-mode Operation

▪ Dual-mode operation allows OS to protect itself and other

system components
• User mode and kernel mode
▪ Mode bit provided by hardware
• Provides ability to distinguish when system is running user
code or kernel code.
• When a user is running ➔ mode bit is “user”
• When kernel code is executing ➔ mode bit is “kernel”
▪ How do we guarantee that user does not explicitly set the mode
bit to “kernel”?
• System call changes mode to kernel, return from call resets
it to user
▪ Some instructions designated as privileged, only executable in
kernel mode

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 Transition from User to Kernel Mode

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 Timer
▪ Timer to prevent infinite loop (or process hogging resources)
• Timer is set to interrupt the computer after some time period
• Keep a counter that is decremented by the physical clock
• Operating system set the counter (privileged instruction)
• When counter zero generate an interrupt
• Set up before scheduling process to regain control or terminate
program that exceeds allotted time

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 Process Management
▪ A process is a program in execution. It is a unit of work within the
system. Program is a passive entity; process is an active entity.
▪ Process needs resources to accomplish its task
• CPU, memory, I/O, files
• Initialization data
▪ Process termination requires reclaim of any reusable resources
▪ Single-threaded process has one program counter specifying location
of next instruction to execute
• Process executes instructions sequentially, one at a time, until
completion
▪ Multi-threaded process has one program counter per thread
▪ Typically system has many processes, some user, some operating
system running concurrently on one or more CPUs
• Concurrency by multiplexing the CPUs among the processes /
threads

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 Process Management Activities

The operating system is responsible for the following activities in

connection with process management:
▪ Creating and deleting both user and system processes
▪ Suspending and resuming processes
▪ Providing mechanisms for process synchronization
▪ Providing mechanisms for process communication
▪ Providing mechanisms for deadlock handling

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 Memory Management

▪ To execute a program all (or part) of the instructions must be in

memory
▪ All (or part) of the data that is needed by the program must be in
memory
▪ Memory management determines what is in memory and when
• Optimizing CPU utilization and computer response to users
▪ Memory management activities
• Keeping track of which parts of memory are currently being used
and by whom
• Deciding which processes (or parts thereof) and data to move into
and out of memory
• Allocating and deallocating memory space as needed

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 File-system Management
▪ OS provides uniform, logical view of information storage
• Abstracts physical properties to logical storage unit - file
• Each medium is controlled by device (i.e., disk drive, tape drive)
 Varying properties include access speed, capacity, data-
transfer rate, access method (sequential or random)

▪ File-System management
• Files usually organized into directories
• Access control on most systems to determine who can access
what
• OS activities include
 Creating and deleting files and directories
 Primitives to manipulate files and directories
 Mapping files onto secondary storage
 Backup files onto stable (non-volatile) storage media

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 Mass-Storage Management
▪ Usually disks used to store data that does not fit in main
memory or data that must be kept for a “long” period of time
▪ Proper management is of central importance
▪ Entire speed of computer operation hinges on disk subsystem
and its algorithms
▪ OS activities
• Mounting and unmounting
• Free-space management
• Storage allocation
• Disk scheduling
• Partitioning
• Protection

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 Caching

▪ Important principle, performed at many levels in a computer

(in hardware, operating system, software)
▪ Information in use copied from slower to faster storage
temporarily
▪ Faster storage (cache) checked first to determine if
information is there
• If it is, information used directly
Judi!123 from the cache (fast)
• If not, data copied to cache and used there
▪ Cache smaller than storage being cached
• Cache management important design problem
• Cache size and replacement policy

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 Characteristics of Various Types of Storage

Movement between levels of storage hierarchy can be explicit or implicit

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 Migration of data “A” from Disk to Register

▪ Multitasking environments must be careful to use most recent value,

no matter where it is stored in the storage hierarchy

▪ Multiprocessor environment must provide cache coherency in

hardware such that all CPUs have the most recent value in their
cache
▪ Distributed environment situation even more complex
• Several copies of a datum can exist
• Various solutions covered in Chapter 19

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 I/O Subsystem
▪ One purpose of OS is to hide peculiarities of hardware devices from
the user
▪ I/O subsystem responsible for
• Memory management of I/O including buffering (storing data
temporarily while it is being transferred), caching (storing parts of
data in faster storage for performance), spooling (the overlapping
of output of one job with input of other jobs)
• General device-driver interface
• Drivers for specific hardware devices

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 Protection and Security

▪ Protection – any mechanism for controlling access of processes or

users to resources defined by the OS
▪ Security – defense of the system against internal and external attacks
• Huge range, including denial-of-service, worms, viruses, identity
theft, theft of service
▪ Systems generally first distinguish among users, to determine who
can do what
• User identities (user IDs, security IDs) include name and
associated number, one per user
• User ID then associated with all files, processes of that user to
determine access control
• Group identifier (group ID) allows set of users to be defined and
controls managed, then also associated with each process, file
• Privilege escalation allows user to change to effective ID with
more rights

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 Virtualization

▪ Allows operating systems to run applications within other OSes

• Vast and growing industry
▪ Emulation used when source CPU type different from target type (i.e.
PowerPC to Intel x86)
• Generally slowest method
• When computer language not compiled to native code –
Interpretation
▪ Virtualization – OS natively compiled for CPU, running guest OSes
also natively compiled
• Consider VMware running WinXP guests, each running
applications, all on native WinXP host OS
• VMM (virtual machine Manager) provides virtualization services

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 Virtualization (cont.)

▪ Use cases involve laptops and desktops running multiple OSes for
exploration or compatibility
• Apple laptop running Mac OS X host, Windows as a guest
• Developing apps for multiple OSes without having multiple
systems
• Quality assurance testing applications without having multiple
systems
• Executing and managing compute environments within data
centers
▪ VMM can run natively, in which case they are also the host
• There is no general-purpose host then (VMware ESX and Citrix
XenServer)

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 Computing Environments - Virtualization

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 Distributed Systems
▪ Distributed computiing
• Collection of separate, possibly heterogeneous, systems
networked together
 Network is a communications path, TCP/IP most common
– Local Area Network (LAN)
– Wide Area Network (WAN)
– Metropolitan Area Network (MAN)
– Personal Area Network (PAN)
• Network Operating System provides features between systems
across network
 Communication scheme allows systems to exchange
messages
 Illusion of a single system

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 Computer System Architecture

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 Computer-System Architecture

▪ Most systems use a single general-purpose processor

• Most systems have special-purpose processors as well
▪ Multiprocessors systems growing in use and importance
• Also known as parallel systems, tightly-coupled systems
• Advantages include:
1. Increased throughput
2. Economy of scale
3. Increased reliability – graceful degradation or fault tolerance
• Two types:
1. Asymmetric Multiprocessing – each processor is assigned
a specie task.
2. Symmetric Multiprocessing – each processor performs all
tasks

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 Symmetric Multiprocessing Architecture

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 Dual-Core Design
▪ Multi-chip and multicore
▪ Systems containing all chips
• Chassis containing multiple separate systems

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 Non-Uniform Memory Access System

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 Clustered Systems

▪ Like multiprocessor systems, but multiple systems working together

• Usually sharing storage via a storage-area network (SAN)
• Provides a high-availability service which survives failures
 Asymmetric clustering has one machine in hot-standby mode
 Symmetric clustering has multiple nodes running applications,
monitoring each other
• Some clusters are for high-performance computing (HPC)
 Applications must be written to use parallelization
• Some have distributed lock manager (DLM) to avoid conflicting
operations

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 Clustered Systems

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 PC Motherboard

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 Computer System Environments

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 Computing Environments

▪ Traditional
▪ Mobile
▪ Client Server
▪ Pear-to-Pear
▪ Cloud computing
▪ Real-time Embedded

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 Traditional

▪ Stand-alone general-purpose machines

▪ But blurred as most systems interconnect with others (i.e.,
the Internet)
▪ Portals provide web access to internal systems
▪ Network computers (thin clients) are like Web terminals
▪ Mobile computers interconnect via wireless networks
▪ Networking becoming ubiquitous – even home systems
use firewalls to protect home computers from Internet
attacks

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 Mobile

▪ Handheld smartphones, tablets, etc.

▪ What is the functional difference between them and a
“traditional” laptop?
▪ Extra feature – more OS features (GPS, gyroscope)
▪ Allows new types of apps like augmented reality
▪ Use IEEE 802.11 wireless, or cellular data networks for
connectivity
▪ Leaders are Apple iOS and Google Android

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 Client Server

▪ Client-Server Computing
• Dumb terminals supplanted by smart PCs
• Many systems now servers, responding to requests generated by
clients
 Compute-server system provides an interface to client to
request services (i.e., database)
 File-server system provides interface for clients to store and
retrieve files

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 Peer-to-Peer

▪ Another model of distributed system

▪ P2P does not distinguish clients and servers
• Instead all nodes are considered peers
• May each act as client, server or both
• Node must join P2P network
 Registers its service with central
lookup service on network, or
 Broadcast request for service and
respond to requests for service via
discovery protocol
• Examples include Napster and Gnutella,
Voice over IP (VoIP) such as Skype

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 Cloud Computing
▪ Delivers computing, storage, even apps as a service
across a network
▪ Logical extension of virtualization because it uses
virtualization as the base for it functionality.
• Amazon EC2 has thousands of servers, millions of
virtual machines, petabytes of storage available
across the Internet, pay based on usage

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 Cloud Computing (Cont.)
▪ Many types
• Public cloud – available via Internet to anyone willing to pay
• Private cloud – run by a company for the company’s own use
• Hybrid cloud – includes both public and private cloud components
• Software as a Service (SaaS) – one or more applications available
via the Internet (i.e., word processor)
• Platform as a Service (PaaS) – software stack ready for application
use via the Internet (i.e., a database server)
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – servers or storage available
over Internet (i.e., storage available for backup use)

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 Cloud Computing (cont.)
▪ Cloud computing environments composed of traditional OSes, plus
VMMs, plus cloud management tools
• Internet connectivity requires security like firewalls
• Load balancers spread traffic across multiple applications

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 Real-Time Embedded Systems

▪ Real-time embedded systems most prevalent form of computers

• Vary considerable, special purpose, limited purpose OS, real-
time OS
• Use expanding
▪ Many other special computing environments as well
• Some have OSes, some perform tasks without an OS
▪ Real-time OS has well-defined fixed time constraints
• Processing must be done within constraint
• Correct operation only if constraints met

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 Free and Open-Source Operating Systems

▪ Operating systems made available in source-code format rather than

just binary closed-source and proprietary
▪ Counter to the copy protection and Digital Rights Management
(DRM) movement
▪ Started by Free Software Foundation (FSF), which has “copyleft”
GNU Public License (GPL)
• Free software and open-source software are two different ideas
championed by different groups of people
 http://gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html/
▪ Examples include GNU/Linux and BSD UNIX (including core of Mac
OS X), and many more
▪ Can use VMM like VMware Player (Free on Windows), Virtualbox
(open source and free on many platforms - http://www.virtualbox.com)
• Use to run guest operating systems for exploration

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 The Study of Operating Systems
There has never been a more interesting time to study operating systems, and it has never been
easier. The open-source movement has overtaken operating systems, causing many of them to be
made available in both source and binary (executable) format. The list of operating
systems available in both formats includes Linux, BUSD UNIX, Solaris, and part of macOS.
The availability of source code allows us to study operating systems from the inside out.
Questions that we could once answer only by looking at documentation or the behavior of an
operating system we can now answer by examining the code itself.

Operating systems that are no longer commercially viable have been open-sourced as well, enabling
us to study how systems operated in a time of fewer CPU, memory, and storage resources.
An extensive but incomplete list of open-source operating-system projects is available
from https://curlie.org/Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/Open_Source/

In addition, the rise of virtualization as a mainstream (and frequently free) computer function
makes it possible to run many operating systems on top of one core system. For example, VMware
(http://www.vmware.com) providesa free “player” for Windows on which hundreds of free
“virtual appliances” can run. Virtualbox (http://www.virtualbox.com) provides a free, open-source
virtual machine manager on many operating systems. Using such tools, students can try out
hundreds of operating systems without dedicated hardware.

The advent of open-source operating systems has also made it easier to make the move from
student to operating-system developer. With some knowledge, some effort, and an Internet
connection, a student can even create a new operating-system distribution. Just a few years ago,
it was difficult or impossible to get access to source code. Now, such access is limited only by
how much interest, time, and disk space a student has.

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 End of Chapter 1

Operating System Concepts – 10h Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018