Friday, October 1, 2010

homework [ thanks bayan]

What does the operating system do?


An operating system does two things:


It manages the hardware and software resources of a system. Examples, the processor, memory, and disk space.


It provides a way for applications to deal with the hardware without having to know all the details of the hardware.


What is the difference between utility programs and device drivers?


A driver is a program that enables a hardware device to communicate with the computer operating system, example: keyboard driver, disk driver, mouse driver, printer driver, etc.
Many drivers come with the operating systems. When you connect a new device to your computer, you would need a driver for the device to be recognize and work properly with the operating system.


A utility is a computer software program that performs very specific tasks, utilized to help use, maintain and protect the operating system or other software programs. Examples: antivirus, zip/unzip files, defragmenter. What is the difference and responsiblites of authentication and authorization?


Authentication is a mechanism that systems use securely identify their users. 


Authorization is a mechanism that systems use to determine what level of access a particular user should have to secured resources.

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