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Questions tagged [operating-systems]

The software layer between your hardware and application programs. It manages program scheduling, memory allocation, interrupt handling, disk input/output, graphic acceleration, hosting device drivers and various other resources.

Common features:

Some well-known operating systems and their distributions, in alphabetical order:

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32-bit vs. 64-bit systems

What are the differences between 32-bit and 64-bit systems? If you have used both of them, what kind of sharp differences have you experienced? Would it be a problem to use 32-bit programs on 64-bit systems in some cases?
Mehper C. Palavuzlar
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Use physical harddisk in Virtual Box

Using Virtual Box, how can I install an OS to a secondary, physical disk, and boot it in both (at separate times) Virtual Box, and as a typical secondary OS install?
Petah
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How much space to leave free on HDD or SSD?

In the informal (i.e. journalistic) technology press, and in online technology blogs and discussion forums, one commonly encounters anecdotal advice to leave some amount of space free on hard disk drives or solid state drives. Various reasons for…
user11574
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How does the computer know that the PC was not properly shut down?

Actually, this question struck me because of power cuts in my house. When there is a power cut, there is a sudden loss of power from the computer. How does the computer know that the shutdown was not properly done?
FrozenKing
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What technical reasons exist for not using space characters in file names?

Somebody I know expressed irritation today regarding those of us who tend not to use spaces in our filenames, e.g. NamingThingsLikeThis.txt -- despite most modern operating systems supporting spaces in filenames. Are there technical reasons that…
Chris W. Rea
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Using UDF on a USB flash drive

After failing to copy a file bigger than 4G to my 8G USB flash drive, I formatted it as ext3. While this is working fine for me so far, it will cause problems if I want to use it to copy files to someone which does not use Linux. I am thinking of…
CesarB
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Does every OS need RAM?

Is there an OS which can be used without RAM, specifically the kind I can create a bootable pendrive from and use it in the computer? This gets awkward, since booting is essentially loading OS in RAM. Note: I originally wanted to know about a…
Suvarna Pattayil
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How is virtual memory actually increasing the memory space?

I understand that virtual memory fools the program by displaying more memory than is actually available. But ultimately it has to map the logical address to the actually physical address. Now how is it increasing the memory?
Ahti
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Why is "Everything is a file" unique to the Unix operating systems?

I often hear people say "Unix's unique philosophy is that it treats everything as a file" or "In Unix, everything is a file". But I've never heard anyone explain why it is unique to Unix. So, why is this unique to Unix? Does other operating systems…
Some Noob Student
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Does Windows still rely on MS-DOS?

I am just about to start an OS course and as an Apple user I am not very familiar with the underlying details of Windows OS. I was wondering, is MS DOS still used with Windows running on top or is ONLY Windows used now as the OS? I was a little…
rrazd
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What is the relationship between Unix, Linux, Ubuntu, Debian and Android?

What is the relationship between Unix, Linux, Ubuntu, and Debian? I suspect they are all Operating Systems that are based upon one another - similar to how Windows is based on DOS. Is my suspicion correct? Do these operating systems have the same…
IremadzeArchil19910311
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Is Unix not a PC operating system?

I am doing my bachelor's degree at a university. In a written assignment, the professor posted the task: "Name three PC operating systems". Well, I went on an included a variety of OSes (Linux, Windows, Mac OS X) and including Unix & Solaris. Today…
Tobias Boschek
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Would an executable need an OS kernel to run?

I know that when the source code, in say C++, is compiled, the output from the compiler is the machine code (executable) which I thought were instructions to the CPU directly. Recently I was reading up on kernels and I found out that programs cannot…
GRANZER
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cat /proc/meminfo what do all those numbers mean

In reading the man page on the free command in Linux. I found that is gets its info from /proc/meminfo. I understand a few of the entries, like MemTotal and MemFree. What do the rest mean. cat /proc/meminfo MemTotal: 3973736 kB MemFree: …
nelaaro
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What is there in an Operating System other than the kernel

As I understand it, the kernel does all the interaction with the hardware, and manages the memory, the I/O devices, etc. So the kernel is doing everything, yet it is just a part of the operating system. So what else is there in an OS ? Just the…
AnkurVj
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