CST 334 - WEEK 1, JOURNAL 1! What I have Learned This Week :)

 First of all, from the resources of readings and all the information behind Operating Systems I learned quite a few things. I also learned a lot through the lab assignment. Here are just a handful of all of the things I learned: 

-The Operating System is the layer between the hardware and the software and is usually referred to as the Virtual Machine 

-The OS can also be referred to as the resource manager. 

-The Operating System has 3 main tasks to perform:

    -It shields the details of the hardware from the application programs, which shields them from the User. 

    -The OS must substitute a set of abstract services to the application programs. The operations need to translate the abstract services into hardware operations.

    - The OS must act as a resource manager, optimizing the use of those resources. It protects against abuse or misuse. 

-How to convert between bases such as 9->binary is 1001 where the first bit is between 0-1, the second bit is either 0 or 2, the third bit is 0 or 4, and the fifth bit is 0 or 8. Adding all the 1's conversion equals 9. -In Octal bases, what you have to do to convert a number into base 10 is multiply each level as an exponent to 8 by the number in that number place. For instance, 345 base 8 is 3*8^2 + 4*8^1 + 5*8^0.   -In Hexadecimal bases, what you have to do is first take it literally to translate it into base 10. Such as, the a3 base 16 is really a*16^1 (here, a is translated as 10 in decimal so it's really 10*16^1) + 3*16^0 (which is basically 3*1) and after adding it all up you get 163 in base 10. 

-In learning about Linux OS, I learned what the kernel is. According to the slides, it is "The lowest-level software core of an operating system that interfaces with the hardware in your computer." In the hierarchy of things, it is between the Applications and the Devices, Cpu and Memory. 

-Before Linux, there was Unix! Also there were many problems that occurred when Linux arrived because it was open software. 

-A shell is an "interactive program that uses user input to manage the execution of other programs". The one we are using in this class is Bash. There are many others; however, such as Bourne, csh and tsch. 

-While working in the Bash shell, I learned some basic commands such as ls, or even better ls -al, pwd which shows the path, cd which changes the working directory, and exit which signs you out of the shell. In my own personal research I learned some more such as clear, chmod, touch and more! 

There has been so much that I have learned in this first week of classes, and I hope to learn so much more in the weeks to come!