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3. Operating systems
The operating system is part of the system software.
All computers and devices have an operating system, 
they cannot function without one.
The operating system is a program that allows applications software to communicate with the hardware.
Examples of operating systems are Windows Vista, Windows 7, Unix, Linux and MacOS.
An operating system has many tasks. Here are just a few of them:
- Sorting out where to store data on disk drives
- Dealing with security - user names and passwords
- Organizing files and folders
- Managing data transfer from the CPU to the peripherals e.g. printer, monitor
- Deals with saving, deleting, opening, closing files
We will be looking in more detail at operating systems in a later section
Challenge see if you can find out one extra fact on this topic that we haven't already told you
Click on this link: Operating System