types of system softwares

o Operating system
o Device drivers
o Utilities

Operating system:
An operating system (sometimes abbreviated as "OS") is the program that manages all the other programs in a computer. It is a integrated collection of routines that service the sequencing and processing of programs by a computer. Note: An operating system may provide many services, such as resource allocation, scheduling, input/output control, and data management.
Definition of Operating system:
“Operating system is the software responsible for controlling the allocation and usage of hardware sources such as memory, central processing unit (CPU) time, disk space, and peripheral devices. The operating system is the foundation on which applications, such as word processing and spreadsheet programs, are built. (Microsoft)”

Device drivers:
The device driver software is used to communicate between the devices and the computer. We have monitor, keyboard and mouse attached to almost all PC’s; if we look at the properties of these devices we will see that the operating system has
installed special software to control these devices. This piece of software is called device driver software. When we attach a new device with the computer, we need software to communicate with this device. These kinds of software are known as device drivers e.g. CD Rom driver, Sound Card driver and Modem driver. Normally manufacturer of the device provide the device driver software with the device. For scanners to work properly with the computers we install the device driver of the scanner. Nowadays if you have seen a scanner, it comes with TWAIN Drivers. TWAIN stands for Technology Without An Interesting Name.

Utility Software:
Utility software is a program that performs a very specific task, usually related to managing system resources. You would have noticed a utility of Disk Compression. Whenever you write a file and save it to the disk, Compression Utility compresses the file (reduce the file size) and write it to the disk and when you request this file from the disk, the compression utility uncompressed the file and shows its contents. Similarly there is another utility, Disk Defragmentation which is used to defragment the disk. The data is stored on the disks in chunks, so if we are using several files and are making changes to these files then the different portions of file are saved on different locations on the disk. These chunks are linked and the operating system knows how to read the contents of file from the disk combining all the chunks. Similarly when we delete a file then the place where that file was stored on the disk is emptied and is available now to store other files. As the time goes on, we have a lot of empty and used pieces on the disk. In such situation we say that the disk is fragmented now. If we remove this fragmentation the chunks of data on the disk will be stored close to each other and thus reading of data will be faster. For the purpose of removing fragmentation on the disk the Defragmentation utility is used.

The compilers and interpreters also belong to the System Software category.

For previous lesson click here: Software Categories
For next lesson click here: History of C Language

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types of system softwares