Tools for Information Literacy
Operating Systems
What is an operating system?
There are more than a few.
What others are out there? (note: this page is dated, but it is a good historical comparison)
Evolution of Operating Systems (useful for the historical background)
How Operating Systems Work - to quote How Stuff Works,
At the simplest level, an operating system does two things:
- It manages the hardware and software resources of the computer system. These resources include such things as the processor, memory, disk space, etc.
- It provides a stable, consistent way for applications to deal with the hardware without having to know all the details of the hardware.
