Operating system and its services

By Siddhi Waghchoude
 Linux History
A popular open-source operating system is Linux. It was initially created by Linus Torvalds in 1991. At the time,
Torvalds was a computer science student at the University of Helsinki, Finland and began working on the Linux
project as a personal endeavour. The name Linux is a combination of his first name, Linus, and Unix, the operating
system that inspired his projects. At the time, most operating systems were proprietary and expensive. Torvalds
wanted to create an operating system that was freely available to anyone who wanted to use the operating system,
He originally released Linux as free software under the GNU General Public License. This meant that anyone could
use, modify, and redistribute his source code.
Early versions of Linux were primarily used by technology enthusiasts and software developers, but over time it
has grown in popularity and is used in various types of devices such as servers, smartphones, and embedded
systems. Linux is considered one of the most stable, secure and reliable operating systems and is widely used in
servers, supercomputers and enterprise environments. Today, Linux is one of the most widely used operating
systems in the world, with an estimated 2.76% of all desktop computers and more than 90% of the world’s top
supercomputers running on Linux, and approx. 71.85% of all mobile devices run on Android, which is, you
guessed it, Linux-based. The Linux community has expanded to include thousands of developers and users who
work on the creation and upkeep of the operating system. Nowadays Linux has many distributions (versions)
namely: Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Plasma, KDE, Mint, Manjaro
 DOS History

A disk operating system (DOS) is an operating system for x86 based personal computers mostly developed by
Microsoft. MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and some operating systems attempting to be compatible
with MS-DOS. Sometimes it is referred to as "DOS", which is also the generic acronym for disk operating
system.

MS-DOS was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s. It was
gradually superseded by operating systems offering a graphical user interface (GUI) in various graphical
Microsoft Windows operating system generations.

DOS is also used to describe several similar command-line disk operating systems. Early computers, such as the
Commodore 64, Atari 800, and Apple II, all featured a disk operating system, including Commodore Business
Machines DOS, Atari DOS, and Apple DOS, respectively. DOS/360 was an OS for IBM mainframes, which first
appeared in 1966, but it is unrelated to the 8086-based DOS of the 1980s.
 Feature DOS LINUX

Development Developed by Microsoft. Linux is developed by Open Source Development.

License Proprietary Open-source

Interface It supports a Text-Based/ Command-line It supports both Command-line interfaces/Graphical user

interface. interfaces.

Multitasking DOS is unable to run multiple processes at the Linux supports multitasking
same time.

Distribution DOS was distributed by Microsoft. Linux is distributed by various vendors, such as Red Hat,
Fedora,Ubuntu etc.

Usage DOS can be installed on standalone PC Linux can be installed on a wide variety of computer hardware,
desktops or laptops. mobile phones, and video game consoles to mainframes and
supercomputers.

Reliability DOS is not very reliable because it crashes Linux is very reliable and is known for being run for months or
easily if a program doesn’t open properly or a even years without needing to be rebooted.
wrong command is issued.

User- Support Linux is a multi-user operating system.

 Files, Drives and Directories
Files Concepts: A file is a named collection of related information that is recorded on secondary storage such as
magnetic disks, magnetic tapes and optical disks.

Attributes of a File Following are some of the attributes of a file:

• Name . It is the only information which is in human-readable form.
• Identifier. The file is identified by a unique tag(number) within file system.
• Type. It is needed for systems that support different types of files.
• Location. Pointer to file location on device.
• Size. The current size of the file.
• Protection. This controls and assigns the power of reading, writing, executing.
• Time, date, and user identification. This is the data for protection, security, and usage monitoring.
 File Operations
The operating system must do to perform basic file operations given below.

• Creating a file: Two steps are necessary to create a file. First, space in the file system must be found for the file.
Second, an entry for the new file must be made in the directory.

• Writing a file: To write a file, we make a system call specifying both the name of the file and the information to
be written to the file. Given the name of the file, the system searches the directory to find the file's location. The
system must keep a write pointer to the location in the file where the next write is to take place. The write pointer
must be updated whenever a write occurs.

• Reading a file: To read from a file, we use a system call that specifies the name of the file and where (in
memory) the next block of the file should be put. Again, the directory is searched for the associated entry, and the
system needs to keep a read pointer to the location in the file where the next read is to take place. Once the read
has taken place, the read pointer is updated.
• Repositioning within a file: The directory is searched for the appropriate entry, and the current-file-position
pointer is repositioned to a given value. Repositioning within a file need not involve any actual I/O. This file
operation is also known as a file seek.

• Deleting a file. To delete a file, we search the directory for the named file. Having found the associated
directory entry, we release all file space, so that it can be reused bv other files, and erase the directory entry.

• Protection: Access-control information determines who can do reading, writing, executing, and so on.
• Truncating a file: The user may want to erase the contents of a file but keep its attributes. Rather than forcing the
user to delete the file and then recreate it, this function allows all attributes to remain unchanged—except for file
length—but lets the tile be reset to length zero and its file space released.
 Drive
Drive refers to a type of storage device that can be used to store digital data, including documents, photos, videos,
and other types of files. It can be an internal or external device and can be connected to a computer or other device
through various interfaces, such as universal serial bus (USB) or serial advanced technology attachment (SATA).
There are multiple types of drives in a computer, including:
Hard disk drives (HDDs)
A good choice for those looking for a lot of storage space at a lower cost, HDDs use spinning disks to read and
write data.
Solid-state drives (SSDs)
Faster and more durable than HDDs, SSDs use flash memory to store data. SSDs are typically more expensive
than HDDs, but are ideal for users who want faster data access, reduced loading times, and improved
multitasking capabilities.
Optical drives
Use lasers to read and write data on compact discs (CDs), digital versatile disc or digital video discs (DVDs), and
other types of optical media.
Network drives
Usually designated as the “U: drive”.
 Directory
A directory is a container that is used to contain folders and file.

It organizes files and folders into a hierarchical manner.