Questions tagged [operating-systems]
An operating system (OS) is a basic software whose rule is to intermediate software requisitions for resources and the hardware available, manage input/output, memory allocation/deallocation, file systems, among other basic tasks a device should do.
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Operating systems - whose responsibility is it to coordinate process I/O requests?
I am reading Tanenbaum's Modern Operating Systems. I want to understand a particular concept regarding processes and blocking system calls, specifically with regards to I/O. I assume threads might ...
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Still confused why a monolithic operating system is faster than a layered operating system
In the book Operating System Concepts,
In the summary it states:
A monolithic operating system has no structure; all functionality is provided in a single, static binary file that runs in a single ...
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Within the same computer, what is the difference between API and IPC?
So, an Application Programming Interface is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other.
An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more
computer ...
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System Monitor vs Operating System [closed]
I'm having a tough time finding the distinction between the two.
My understanding is that "operating system" refers to a more abstracted job monitor with extended functionality (e.g. task-...
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Why do modern operating systems *ever* have perceptible input (keyboard/mouse) lag?
Sometimes computers stutter a bit when they're working hard, to the point where the mouse location freezes for a fraction of a second, or stutters intermittently for a few seconds. This sometimes ...
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Dealing with multiple application instances
I'm developing an application (Java & JavaFX) that writes/reads data (a file). The problem is I don't want to restrict user to run only one instance (of my app) at a time, as I really can't think ...
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How do different operating systems have different window layouts? [closed]
I have searched on the Internet on how do operating systems have different window layouts, but I have found nothing. Windows has one style, Mac OS has another, and Linux has a different style as well. ...
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Isn't OS dependent on machines, can anyone briefly explain how it is achieved? [closed]
Certain OS in it's system requirement doesn't specify anything peculiar like in case of ubuntu it asks only for "2 GHz dual core processor or better". If yes, how does it compares with ...
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Where did usage of OS signals go?
From what books I read on linux system programming, it seems like signals were the primary way to communicate events between processes. They were the gateway into many interesting functionalities, ...
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Building a program that truly deletes everything
We all know that if we delete a file, the operating system is recycling it but doesn't actually delete it. It just removes it from the directory indexes, and until the data is needed and overwritten, ...
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Is ABI governed by hardware or is it only an agreement between software
ABI (Application binary interface) defines things like caller and callee saved registers, stack use, register use, end-of-routine stack pop etc.
Is ABI only an agreement between compilers and other ...
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Sysadmin password storing
I'm quite unexperienced in the sysadmin area. Now I'm facing the responsability of managing two (remote) servers. I'm working in an informal organization.
So I have passwords for the OS's users, ...
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What's contained in 'kernel mode' in virtual address space of a process?
I'm reading through Mickens' OS notes, and I came across the following depiction of a virtual address space.
I conceptually understand "user mode" of a process' virtual address space. It ...
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Can the operating system "break up" a memory allocation (Linux)?
Let's say a process (P1) is asking for 100 MB of memory, and the RAM looks like this:
[[50 MB free] [USED] [60 MB free] [USED]]
Since there are technically enough memory that are available (110MB ...
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Trying to understand OS-Level Virtualization
I'm trying to learn more about the fundamentals of containerization.
I came across the term "OS-Level Virtualization" as the partitioning of the user space to further increase process ...
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