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At one time, all an Operating System did was load other programs into memory so the processor would run them instead. All of the sandboxing, garbage collection,
by stephengillie 12y ago
At one time, all an Operating System did was load other programs into memory so the processor would run them instead. All of the sandboxing, garbage collection, security, and other features were added to make it more usable.
- pyre 12y agoCorrect. The usability gain was not having to (e.g.) write your own printer drivers if you wanted your program to use a printer. But if nowadays (e.g.) printer controllers are smart enough to take on most of the tasks that the OS abstracts from processes running in under it, then maybe we can turn that abstraction into a much thinner layer between the processes and the hardware.