Operating systems - 2

Well, first of all, let me announce you, the availability of free code for the assignments you find in the standard Galvin book in the link below

http://www.operatingsystemscode.blogspot.com/

Incase, if you are having the Operating systems course to study, these are the likely code snippets you will be given home work for.

Today, let's discuss some more things about operating systems.This is the def of operating system

"Operating system is a software, that makes the hardware do useful things"

There are many more definitions of it, but let's stick to this.One more thing most computer science students or IT students including me, when we join college is to fascinate of building an operating system entirely from scratch, knowing each and every detail.

If you try to do the above said thing, you will either become a mad person or get addicted to some other things in life.What I want you to learn is that, building every thing from scratch is not needed today :)

For example, let me give you the example of Linus Torvalds.He did not entirely build the Linux as people think.He used internet to connect with people and gather useful piece of code he needed, and using some of the code, that is already generated, he prepared Linux. I am not telling you to copy the code, but to steal it.In a sense, that you make it more beautiful.In the words of Picasso

"Good artists copy, great artists steal"

Learn to reuse the code and build something on top of it, which makes the software more usable or will be better than that software.And this is what, you cannot do with proprietary software.I recommend you to switch to one of open Source OS and start altering their code or the software you install in them.You willl really gain a lot of insight and knowledge into it.