An operating system is software that manages a computer’s hardware. It also provides a basis for application programs and acts as an intermediary between the computer user and the computer hardware.

In order to explore the role of an operating system in a modern computing environment, it is important first to understand the organization and architecture of computer hardware. This includes the CPU, memory, and I/O devices, as well as storage. A fundamental responsibility of an operating system is to allocate these resources to programs.

What Operating Systems Do

A computer system can be divided roughly into four components: the hardware, the operating system, the application programs, and a user.