Chapter 3 - Operating Systems
General Outcomes
- Apply understanding of the role and functioning of operating systems to a variety of situations in both CS classroom and daily life, e.g.,
- Describe computer activity necessary to accomplish some particular goal, e.g., read data from a file, stream a video, etc.
- Explain how computers can seem to be doing more than one task at a time.
- Formulate a hypothesis that would explain a computer system's, perhaps unexpected, behavior.
- Apply an understanding of the role and functioning of operating systems to a variety of security and societal issues, e.g.,
- Identify a variety of security threats that operating systems can mitigate and identify how that is done.
- Discuss user responsibilities with respect to protecting the computer systems they use, particularly when other users may be impacted.
- Analyze a given issue to formulate responsibility and liability of various stakeholders, i.e., CPU suppliers, computer/device suppliers, government, and users/consumers.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this unit students should be able to:
- Given one of the following vocabulary words, give a brief definition of the term and how the item applies in the normal operation of an operating system.
- Job
- Queue
- First-in, first out (FIFO)
- Interactive Processing
- Real-time processing
- Time-sharing
- Multiprogramming
- Multitasking
- Application software
- System software
- User Interface (Graphical User Interface)
- Shell
- Kernel
- Window manager
- File manager
- Memory manager
- Directory (folder)
- Device driver
- Scheduler
- Dispatcher
- Read-only memory
- Boot Loader (Boot-strapping)
- Explain how a historical batch processing system functioned, using the appropriate vocabulary terms from the chapter.
- Explain how a modern multi-tasking system functions, using the appropriate vocabulary terms from the chapter.
- Given a particular task performed by the computer, identify which part(s) of the operating system would be responsible for the task.
- Given one of the following vocabulary words, give a brief definition of the term and how the item applies in the normal operation of an operating system.
- Time slice
- Process (context) switch
- Interrupt
- Semaphore
- Critical Region
- Mutual Exclusion
- Deadlock
- Explain the concept of a process in modern operating systems.
- Identify several of the challenges and/or concerns when working with a modern multi-process system when it comes to competition for shared resources.
- Discuss the conditions necessary for deadlock to occur.
- Discuss methods modern operating systems employ to avoid deadlock.
- Identify existing cybersecurity concerns and the modern operating system security features designed to guard against them.
- Given one of the following vocabulary words, give a brief definition of the term and how the item applies in the normal operation of an operating system.
- Super user (administrator)
- Privilege levels
- Privileged instructions
- Discuss good password management techniques.
- Explain Muti-factor Authentication and why it helps with security.