What is an operating system?

An OS is system software that acts as an intermediary between the user and the hardware, managing
resources and providing services for application software.

What are the main functions of an operating system?

Process management, memory management, file system management, device management, and
security.

What are the di erent types of operating systems?

Batch OS, Time-sharing OS, Distributed OS, Real-time OS, Embedded OS, and Network OS.

What is the kernel?

The kernel is the core part of the OS that manages hardware resources and facilitates communication
between hardware and software.

What is a process?

A process is a program in execution.

What is the di erence between a process and a thread?

A process is an independent execution unit with its own memory space, while a thread is a lightweight
execution unit within a process sharing the process's memory.

What are the di erent states of a process?

New, Ready, Running, Waiting, Terminated.

What is process scheduling?

It is the activity of selecting which process will execute on the CPU.

What are the di erent types of schedulers?

Long-term scheduler, short-term scheduler, and medium-term scheduler.

What is context switching?

Context switching is the process of saving the state of a running process and loading the state of another
process.

What is virtual memory?

Virtual memory is a memory management technique that gives an application the impression it has
contiguous memory while actually using physical memory and disk space.

What is paging?

Paging is a memory management scheme that eliminates the need for contiguous memory by dividing
memory into fixed-size pages.

What is segmentation?

Segmentation divides memory into variable-sized segments based on the logical division of a program.

What is fragmentation?
Fragmentation occurs when memory is ine iciently utilized.

Internal Fragmentation: Wasted space within allocated memory.

External Fragmentation: Wasted space outside allocated memory.

What is a page fault?

A page fault occurs when a program accesses a page that is not in memory, requiring the OS to retrieve it
from secondary storage.

What is a file system?

A file system manages how data is stored and retrieved on a disk.

What are the di erent file access methods?

Sequential access, direct access, and indexed access.

What is the di erence between FAT and NTFS?

FAT (File Allocation Table) is simpler and less secure, while NTFS (New Technology File System) supports
larger files, encryption, and permissions.

What is inode in a file system?

An inode is a data structure used in UNIX-based file systems to store metadata about a file.

What is the purpose of a directory?

A directory organizes and provides a hierarchical structure for storing files.

What is a deadlock?

A deadlock occurs when two or more processes are waiting indefinitely for resources held by each other.

What are the necessary conditions for a deadlock?

Mutual exclusion, hold and wait, no pre-emption, and circular wait.

What are the methods for handling deadlocks?

Deadlock prevention, deadlock avoidance, deadlock detection, and deadlock recovery.

What is a resource allocation graph?

A directed graph used to represent processes and resources, useful for detecting deadlocks.

What is process synchronization?

Synchronization ensures that multiple processes or threads execute in a manner that maintains data
consistency.

What is a critical section?

A critical section is a segment of code that accesses shared resources.

What are the synchronization mechanisms?

Mutex, Semaphore, Monitors.

What is the di erence between a semaphore and a mutex?

What is a race condition?

A race condition occurs when the outcome of a process depends on the non-deterministic order of
execution.

What is a monitor in synchronization?

A monitor is a high-level synchronization construct that encapsulates shared variables and methods.

What is an I/O device?

A hardware device that allows communication between the computer and the external environment.

What are device drivers?

Software that allows the OS to interact with hardware devices.

What is direct memory access (DMA)?

DMA allows devices to transfer data to/from memory without CPU intervention.

What is spooling?

Spooling (Simultaneous Peripheral Operations On-Line) is a process of bu ering data to allow I/O devices
to work independently.

What is an interrupt?

An interrupt is a signal to the CPU to indicate an event that needs immediate attention.

What is multitasking?

Multitasking allows multiple processes to execute simultaneously by sharing CPU time.

What is the di erence between multitasking and multithreading?

Multitasking involves multiple processes; multithreading involves multiple threads within a single process.

What is a real-time operating system (RTOS)?

An RTOS is an OS designed to process data in real-time with minimal delay.

What is the di erence between UNIX and Linux?

UNIX is a proprietary OS, while Linux is an open-source, UNIX-like OS.

What is a shell in an operating system?

A shell is a command-line interface that allows users to interact with the OS.