You can also view previously answered questions in the HSW Question Archive . Every desktop computer uses an operating system . The Mac OS UNIX Linux is a version of the UNIX operating system that has become very popular over the last 3 years or so.
Operating systems are computer programs.
An operating system is the first piece of software that the computer executes when you turn the machine on. The operating system loads itself into memory and begins managing the resources available on the computer. It then provides those resources to other applications that the user wants to execute. Some of those tasks are the different applications that the user is running, and some of them are operating system tasks. The task scheduler is the part of the operating system that lets you print a document from your word processor in one window while you are downloading a file in another window and recalculating a spreadsheet in a third window.