What is the single most important piece of system software on the computer? Discuss its function, and discuss at length its software packages that handle the requests of other programs.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The program that controls the overall operation of the computer is the operating system, and it is the single most important piece of system software on a computer. It is the operating system that communicates with users, determines what they want, and activates other system programs, applications packages, or user programs to carry out their requests. The software packages that handle these requests include the following:• User interface-All modern operating systems provide a powerful graphical user interface (GUI) that gives the user an intuitive visual overview as well as graphical control of the capabilities and services of the computer.• Language services-These programs, called assemblers, compilers, and interpreters, allow you to write programs in a high-level, user-oriented language rather than machine language and to execute these programs easily and efficiently. They often include components such as text editors and debuggers.• Memory managers-These programs allocate memory space for programs and data and retrieve this memory space when it is no longer needed.• Information managers-These programs handle the organization, storage, and retrieval of information on mass storage devices such as hard drives, CDs, DVDs, flash drives, and tapes. They allow you to organize your information in an efficient hierarchical manner, using directories, folders, and files.• I/O systems-These software packages allow you to easily and efficiently use the many different types of input and output devices that exist on a modern computer system.• Scheduler-This system program keeps a list of programs ready to run on the processor, and it selects the one that will execute next. The scheduler allows you to have a number of different programs active at a single time, for instance, surfing the web while you are waiting for a file to finish printing.• Utilities-These collections of library routines provide a wide range of useful services either to a user or to other system routines. Text editors, online help routines, image and sound applications, and control panels are examples of utility routines. Sometimes these utilities are organized into collections called program libraries.