Having been through an OS course in a standard four year degree program, the
definition I recall is that an operating system manages resources. The
types of resources that modern operating systems manage include processes,
memory, and external hardware. (The phrase "modern operating systems" may be
misleading. Most of the features have been around for at least twenty
years.)
Windows includes several modern OS features that DOS does not. Windows
provides multitasking capabililities, so it is more sophisticated in its
management of processes. Windows also provides more sophisticated
management of memory, including its support for virtual memory (using hard
drive space to supplement RAM). Windows also manages the use of the
keyboard, mouse, and screen between processes, through the use of windows on
the screen.
The Windows operating system is really composed of the BIOS, DOS, and the
Windows software components. There is nothing wrong with this; many other
operating systems are composed of more than one component.
Also, file system services are not the only thing that DOS provides. It
also manages memory and processes. Windows does not depend on DOS's ability
to manage memory and processes, but replaces these with its own memory and
process management. In some cases, Windows does not even depend on DOS for
file system services. In fact, with the optional 32-bit disk services, I
believe Windows even bypasses the BIOS for disk access.
Russell Reed
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