Employability Skills III: Basics of operating systems

Hello students, welcome to Kwickprep. You press the power button, and a few seconds later your desktop is ready. Who did all that work? It is a special program called the operating system. Today we will learn what it does, its types, and how to use files and folders.

First, two kinds of software. Software means the programs that tell the hardware what to do. System software runs and manages the computer itself. Application software helps you do a task, like typing a letter or watching a video. The operating system is the most important system software.

So what exactly is an operating system? An operating system, or OS, is the program that starts first when the computer boots. Booting means starting up the computer. It sits between you, your apps and the hardware. Without it, you could not open any app or save any file.

Let us follow one request. You click Print on a school project. The app, say a word processor, passes the request to the operating system. The operating system talks to the printer hardware through a small program called a driver. The printer prints the page.

An operating system does five main jobs. Process management means it decides which program gets the CPU and when. Memory management means it gives RAM to each running program. File management means it stores, names and finds your files. Device management means it controls the keyboard, printer and other devices. Security means it asks for a password and protects your data.

You already use many operating systems. Windows, from Microsoft, is common on office and school computers. macOS, from Apple, runs on Mac computers. Linux is free and open source, and Ubuntu is one popular version of it. Android, from Google, runs on most phones in India. iOS, from Apple, runs on iPhones.

There are two ways to talk to an operating system. In a command line interface, or CLI, you type text commands. For example, you type a command to list the files in a folder. In a graphical user interface, or GUI, you click icons, windows and menus with a mouse or finger. Most people today use a GUI, but experts still use the command line for speed.

Operating systems are also grouped by how they work. A single user OS lets one person use the computer at a time, like your home laptop. A multi user OS lets many people use one computer, like a bank server. A multitasking OS runs many programs at once. A real time OS responds instantly, like the one in an airbag or a traffic signal system.

Now let us look at the screen you see after logging in. The desktop is the main screen, with icons for apps, files and folders. The taskbar at the bottom shows open apps, the clock and notifications. The Start menu, or the app launcher on Linux, lists all installed apps. The recycle bin keeps deleted files for a while, so you can restore them.

Next, files and folders. A file is one saved item, like a photo, a song or an essay. A folder holds files and other folders, like a school bag holds notebooks. The extension after the dot tells the file type, like .docx for a document or .jpg for a photo. Keep files neat by making one folder per subject.

Here are the file tasks you will do every day. To create a folder, right click and choose New, then Folder. To rename a file, select it and press F2 on Windows. Copy keeps the original and makes a second copy. Cut moves the file to a new place. Delete sends the file to the recycle bin.

Time to pause and predict. You press Shift and Delete on a file by mistake. Can you get it back from the recycle bin? No, Shift plus Delete skips the recycle bin and removes the file permanently. So think twice before using it.

Let us revise what we learned today. The operating system is system software that manages the whole computer. Its main functions are process, memory, file, device and security management. Popular examples are Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. We use it through a CLI or a GUI. Files live inside folders, and the extension shows the file type.