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Functions of an Operating System

An operating system performs several core functions that keep a computer running, including device management, memory management, process management, and access control. These functions work together to coordinate hardware, applications, and users on a single machine.

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About this video

An operating system serves as the central coordinator of a computer, responsible for managing hardware, software, and users through a set of core functions. Device management brings together all the physical components of a machine, ensuring they operate in coordination. Disk management handles how data is written to and read from storage, and presents that data in a way that allows users to navigate files and folders. Memory management governs the flow of data through RAM, which acts as a staging area between applications and the CPU, regulating traffic to keep processing efficient. Beyond hardware coordination, the operating system manages the software environment as well. Most applications rely on the OS as an interface to the underlying hardware rather than communicating with it directly, making the OS a critical layer between programs and physical resources. Process management converts application requests into prioritized processes that are queued and sent to the processor in an orderly way, while task management handles the broader coordination of operations running on the machine. Access control adds a security layer by determining whether specific users are permitted to reach particular files, programs, and system resources, enforcing boundaries that protect the integrity of the system.

What you'll learn

What's covered

Operating System Functions

Aligned to

CompTIA Tech+
3.2 Compare and contrast components of an operating system.
3.1 Explain the purpose of operating systems.
CompTIA A+ Core 2
1.8 Explain common OS types and their purposes.

Key terms

Operating System
OS
System software that manages hardware resources, provides common services for application software, and acts as an intermediary between users and computer hardware. Examples include Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Device Management
The operating system function responsible for managing and coordinating hardware components connected to a computer.
Memory Management
The operating system function that controls and coordinates the allocation and use of RAM, staging data between storage and the CPU.
Process Management
The operating system function that prioritizes and schedules processes from applications to be executed by the CPU.
Application Management
The operating system function that coordinates multiple applications running simultaneously, managing their access to hardware resources.
Task Management
The operating system function that oversees and coordinates the various tasks executing on a computer at any given time.
Access Control
A security mechanism that restricts access to resources based on policies, roles, or identity.

Topics

Operating Systems Process Management Memory Management Device Management Access Control Application Management

Transcript

The functions, at a glance

Your operating system carries out several different functions. Here are the different functions of your operating system. Quite honestly, there is some overlap between these, but this gives us a good idea of what functions your operating system carries out:

  • Device management
  • Disk management
  • Memory management
  • The interface between the application and the hardware
  • Application management
  • Process management
  • Task management
  • Access control

Device and disk management

Device management is just managing the different hardware aspects of the machine. There is a lot of different hardware that goes into making the machine function as it does, and the operating system is what ties all of that together.

Some of those devices are the storage devices on your machine. There is specific information that needs to be sent to and retrieved from these storage devices, and a big role in making that all happen is your operating system. Not to mention it gives us some sort of presentation of that information, so that we are able to see and navigate through these files and folders.

Memory management

As things get processed, it all goes through the RAM, your memory. The memory is a staging point, so anything that is going into or coming out of the CPU gets staged in the RAM. Something needs to manage that traffic, and your operating system does that.

The interface between apps and hardware

There are some apps that will manage memory and hardware directly, although most of the apps just go through the operating system and rely on the operating system to do that. So the operating system ends up being this interface between the app and all the hardware.

Application, process and task management

There are also a lot of different apps that are running on your machine at any given time, a lot of programs, a lot of processes, and so in order to be able to utilize all this hardware there needs to be some coordination between those apps. So the OS does some application management.

A lot of that management happens through process management, that those applications, those programs, get turned into some sort of process, a process that is prioritized amongst many different processes. So when there is something that needs to be processed, a request is made, and then that process gets prioritized or put into a queue to be eventually sent to the processor to get processed.

There are also a lot of different tasks that need to happen on your machine, so your operating system does some task management as well.

Access control

Another thing your operating system manages is access control. There are certain resources on your machine that need access by certain users, so it will either accept or deny access from these users to certain applications, documents, programs, objects and a lot of other types of things on your computer.

This was just a quick overview of those different functions of the operating system.

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