EC285 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Proprietary Software, Gnu Free Documentation License, Nextstep
Document Summary
Only one program could run on a computer at a time in the beginning. Application programs (apps): perform some task or set of tasks for the immediate benefit of the user. Operating systems (oss): provide environments that allow users to run application programs. Usually many more than one at a time -and to provide those apps with a set of services that give them indirect access to the computer"s hardware devices (ram, disks, printers, etc. ) and to the network. Weak distinctions -e. g. many application programs are distributed with every os; some of these apps have been travelling with their oss long enough that many people may consider them part of the os. Microsoft"s early pc operating systems (ms-dos, and windows versions 1, 2, 3, 95, 98, and. Os handed complete control of the computer to a single application program, which, on completion of some task (hopefully*) handed control back to the os.
