UNIX Operating Systems UNIX operating systems

Thesis Statement

While UNIX has revolutionized since the past few years, the operating systems is now widely used in workstations, servers, and even mobile devices.

Introduction

UNIX can be defined as a multitasking, multi user, virtual memory operating system; it can run on varied of hardware podiums. This is an indication that UNIX can handle a lot of tasks at one time for different type of users and it provide the facility of running on more memory than it has installed physically. From the user's perspective, this is considered as an advantage and as an operating system it is a potential benefit. UNIX cannot be considered as just an operating system; it is actually a philosophy of programming and using a computer, it obtains power from the relationship between the programs as compared to the program themselves.

Discussion

UNIX is multitasking operating system, it is the inbuilt idea of UNIX that different users of the operating system exist and these different users have different types of access and privileges over different part of the system. It provides the privacy and security options among user, through which one user can protect their data from other user by limiting access. In majority of system there are security of system and privacy of data issues come up, when multiple users connect to it. Furthermore, there is a issue related to identity of the user in order to differentiate one user from other. In UNIX each user can have their login id and password through which they can connect to the system.

The operating system has the ability to handle multiple tasks at a time; these tasks can be according to the preference of the users. These tasks vary according to the requirement to the user, a single user might be required to run multiple programs or there are several programs initiated by multiple users at once. A system with double features such as multiuser and multitasking, gives the benefit to the users to login all at once on the UNIX operating system. It is not only applicable for the huge timesharing system. It is also offered on personal desktop systems, they are capable of supporting multiple users to connect together. There are some system related tasks that the operating system needs to perform in order to provide access for the users.

UNIX is an operating system with virtual memory, the main idea of virtual memory and management of memory can be defined as: A virtual memory operating system behaves like it has more memory than the physically installed memory, where as the other management memory is entirely dependent on the physically installed memory. In case of virtual memory the operating system uses some portion of the disk to create extra memory. This quality makes it possible for the system to accommodate running of large programs even if the system is smaller. There is an evident relationship between the utilization of memory and speed of the program, they are very ...