Operating Systems 2019F Lecture 1

Video

Video for the lecture given on September 4, 2019 is now available.

Notes

In class

Lecture 1
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What is an operating system?
 - code that turns the computer you have into the one you want to program/
   run applications on

Two key tasks
 - resource allocation
 - abstraction


Key abstractions
 - files & directories
 - GUI elements* (windows, mouse pointer, icons, menus)
 - network sockets
 - processes & threads

* in practice, GUI is abstracted to a "frame buffer" of some kind and another
  program often deals with it


In an operating system, one (or more) programs boss around other programs.  How can they do this?

 - hardware is the ultimate enforcer (the CPU mainly)
 - the OS gets to the hardware first