Unit #4 Objectives: Software Part 2: The OS

The objective of unit Software Part 2: The OS is to learn to recognize and understand the 15 key unit vocabulary terms. This is accomplished by completing the readings and other activities.

Unit Vocabulary

Below is a list of key vocabulary terms in this unit. You can also Print out the vocabulary list.

a text-only link between a computer and its operator

The expert technician enjoyed administering the Unix server more than the Windows machine because of the speed and efficiency of the command line interface.

a method of packing data in order to save disk storage space or download time

Zip files and tarballs are two common file compression techniques.

software which converts the data from a component or peripheral into data that an operating system can use

The tech support technician asked the troubled user if he had updated his video card drivers recently

a set of strict rules for controlling read, write, and execute access to a file or directory

The company switched from FAT32 to NTFS file system because the former did not support file permissions.

prepare a device to store data, erasing any existing data

A floppy disk or hard disk drive must be formatted before it can be used to store data

an icon based link between a computer and its operator

Some computing professionals have never made the transition from command line to GUI interfaces because they find it slows them down.

a file which does not appear by default in a directory listing; normally for security reasons or to spare confusion in end users

The administrator was upset when the end user found a way to display and then delete several hidden files.

the fundamental part of an operating system responsible for providing access to the machine's hardware

The system administrator needed to upgrade the kernel in order to provide native support for Serial ATA drives.

an open source version of Unix developed by a volunteer team of programmers around the world

Linux was originally developed by Linus Torvalds, who wanted a free Unix-like operating system that ran on standard PC hardware.

to terminate a connection to a computer or network

The network administrator scripted the system log off users automatically after 10 minutes of inactivity.

to enter information related to an account name and its password in order to access a computer resource

The computer user could not log on because he forgot his username and password.

concurrent execution of two or more tasks by a processor

UNIX is the original multitasking environment and was designed from the beginning to share resources securely over the network.

a GUI or CLI software link between the computer and operator; also provides a framework for productivity software such as an office suite, web browser, or programming languages

The programmer tested his Java code on many operating systems including: Windows, Linux, and Macintosh.

a software program which mimics the performance of one or more hardware devices in order to run software independently of the actual hardware

In order to run Java programs in Windows one needs to download an appropriate virtual machine.

a software toolkit for UNIX systems underlying numerous GUI window managers including KDE and Gnome

The man was impressed at how similar in functionality X was to Microsoft Windows.