- An operating system is a collection of programs and utilities.
- It acts as the interface between user and computer.
- It creates a user-friendly environment for the user.
- The operating system acts as a resource manager.
A computer system has many resources (hardware and software) which may be required for completing a task. The computer uses resources like input/output device, memory, file, storage space, CPU time, and so on. The operating system acts as a manager of all these resources and allocates them to specific program and users as necessary for their tasks. Therefore, we can say operating system acts as a resource manager. Generally, resource sharing will be done in two ways, 'in time' and 'in space'. For example, a CPU is a time sharing resource and sharing resource and the main memory is a space sharing resource. The main difference between in time sharing and in space sharing is 'in time' resource is not divided into units, whereas in space resources is divided into units.