GCSE OCR Computer Science 1.5 Systems Software

What are the four purposes of the systems software?

Controls hardware, allows other applications to run, provides an interface, maintains the system

What is an operating system?

A suite of programs that manages the computer

Give an example of an operating system

IOS

What is a user interface?

A program that allows a user to interact with a computer

What are the three types of user interface?

GUI, Mobile UI, CLI

What are two benefits to graphical user interfaces?

Powerful and easy to use

What are the two requirements of multitasking?

The OS can support it and the computer has enough memory to hold more than one program in primary memory

Why must computer memory be managed?

So more than one program can run and more than one document can be opened at the same time

Give a method of memory management

Paging

What is the typical page size in modern operating systems?

4 kilobytes

What happens in paging?

When a program is run, it is loaded into memory, and the operating system allocates enough pages to hold it and relevant documents. When the program is closed, the pages are freed.

What is paging?

A method of managing memory by which memory is divided into small blocks, called pages, and allocates pages to hold programs.

What are device drivers?

Programs that contain instructions on how to control a peripheral

What are two advantages of device drivers?

Any device can be used with the OS, as long as there is a driver for it, and drivers can be updated for improved performance

What does file handling allow users to do? Give three examples

Create files, move files, search for files

What does user management do? Give three examples

Creating and deleting users, set access levels, auditing file editing

What does utility software do?

Helps maintain the system

What four softwares does utility software encompass?

Encryption, defragmentation, data compression, backup

What is a full backup?

Making a copy of every file

What is an incremental backup?

Making a copy of files that have been edited or created since the last full backup

What are the two kinds of systems software?

Operating system and utilities

What is a detriment of graphical user interfaces?

Require a lot of processing power

What are two benefits to command line interfaces?

Require little processing power and extremely powerful

What is a detriment of command line interfaces?

Difficult to use

What is multitasking?

Being able to run more than one program simultaneously

What are peripherals?

Hardware devices connected to a computer

Give three examples of peripherals

Monitors, printers, cameras

What does defragmentation software do?

Rearranges fragmented files so they run contiguously

What does data compression software do?

Reduces the size of a file stored on secondary storage

What are two drawbacks of a full backup?

Requires lots of storage and time consuming

What is systems software?

Software that governs the computer system

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