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Dual Roles of Operating Systems: Are they in Conflict?

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It is said that there is a dual definition of what an operating system must do. The first one is to present a "virtual machine" to the user which isolates him/her from the bare-bones hardware and is user friendly and effective. The other one is that it has to manage in the most efficient way the (always) limited resources of the computer system. It is also stated that these two goals often conflict. Do you agree? If yes, explain why and what you would do to resolve this. If you do not agree, give an example of some mutual cooperation. Does the concept of the process play a meaningful part in either or both of these tasks?

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This solution examines if the dual functions of operating system contradict each other, and if there is any conflict between them.

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It is said that there is a dual definition of what an operating system must do. The first one is to present a "virtual machine" to the user which isolates him/her from the bare-bones hardware and is user friendly and effective. The other one is that it has to manage in the most efficient way the (always) limited resources of the computer system. It is also stated that these two goals often conflict. Do you agree? If yes, explain why and what you would do to resolve this. If you do not agree, give an example of some mutual cooperation. Does the concept of the process play a meaningful part in either or both of these tasks?

The two principal functions of an Operating system are resource management and its role as a virtual machine to the user.

The Operating system does resource management by managing different processes. As a resource manager it also does process management and memory management. At the same time the ...

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