Question

What type of services an operating system performs for an application?

Answer 1

When a brand new computer comes off the factory assembly line, it can do nothing. The hardware needs software to make it work. Are we talking about applications software such as word processing or spreadsheet software? Partly.

Figure 1: The Operating System in a Hierarchy
But an applications software package does not communicate directly with the hardware. As shown in Figure 1, between the applications software and the hardware is a software interface - an operating system. An operating system is a set of programs that lies between applications software and the computer hardware. Conceptually the operating system software is an intermediary between the hardware and the applications software. Incidentally, the term system software is sometimes used interchangeably with operating system, but system software means all programs related to coordinating computer operations. System software does include the operating system, but it also includes the BIOS software (see the CPU chapter), drivers, and service programs,