The computer's master control program. When a computer is turned on, a small "boot program" loads the operating system. Although additional system modules may be loaded as needed, the main part, known ...

A fundamental overview of operating systems (OSes) with an emphasis on practice. Topics covered include: OS structure, OS models, OS abstractions, concurrency sources, concurrency challenges, ...

A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail. Operating systems are the cockroaches of the digital revolution. They’re ...

Nearly five years later, Windows 11 is still hearing “your older brother did this better.” ...

Developers talk a lot about “immutability.” Outside the technical world, it usually means something negative: unmoving, inflexible, and entrenched. However, in the technical field, these features ...

While Microsoft and Apple don’t release the source code for their operating systems, a good estimate is that it takes around 50 million lines of code to run these software behemoths. The Linux kernel ...