Introduction

Broadly speaking, what are the major roles of an operating system?
Why is it hard to precisely define the concept of an operating system in terms of features and services provided?
What distinguishes the kernel from the rest of the operating system? What are some standard services provided by the kernel?
What is the purpose of an interrupt? What is a trap? Give some generic examples.
In UNIX, how is the interrupt handler located for a given device?
Most computer systems provide hardware support for different modes of operation. At a minimum, two modes are needed. What are they?
What is a process? What is the difference between a process and a thread?
What are the major responsibilities of the operating system when it comes to process management? What about memory management? File management?
Contrast symmetric and asymmetric multiprocessing?
What is the difference between a device controller and a device driver?
What is multiprogramming? What problems in the old days of batch processing lead to the development of multiprogramming?
What is time sharing? How does it relate to the concept of multiprogramming?
What happens during a context switch?
What are the three main advantages of multiprocessor systems?
What kind of hardware support guarantees that the operating system maintains control over the CPU (e.g., a user program cannot run forever)?
What is the main purpose of a cache? What kinds of problems are caused by caches?

Describe three ways in which parameters can be passed to the routine handling a system call.
Java programs cannot make systems calls. Explain how this limitation reflects the design goals of Java. Also explain how the first sentence is not entirely true.
What is the purpose of system programs? Give some generic examples.
In MS-DOS, what happens to the command interpreter as it loads a new program into memory?
What are layered systems? Describe a problem faced by designers of layered systems. Compare with monolithic systems in terms of testing, debugging, and efficiency.
What is a microkernel? What is its main function? Describe the benefits of a microkernel compared to a monolithic kernel. Are there any disadvantages?
Discuss the benefits and problems of dynamically loaded modules compared with with layering and with the microkernel approach.
How would you describe the operating system structure of UNIX? What about Mac OS X?
Define: byte code, JVM, JRE.
The Java interpreter may actually be a just-in-time compiler. Explain. Why is JIT code typically faster than interpreted code? Can JIT code ever perform faster than statically compiled code?
Why are most operating systems written in C and assembly?

What problems in the dinosaur days of computing motivated the design of UNIX?
Discuss the relationship between C and UNIX.
What is the purpose of the GNU project? What does GNU stand for?
What does "free software" mean? What is the name of the legal mechanism for making software free?
Why do some people prefer the term ``open source" to ``free".
What was the motivation for the creation of Linux?
Why is it more proper to refer to the GNU/Linux OS instead of the Linux OS?