Nothing can happen on a computer without an operating system. As the interface that lets the user communicate with the machine and manage all the functions and resources of the computer, nothing could be more important than the operating system.

Older mainframe computers often used operating systems that were developed from IBM’s System/360 (or OS/360). The OS/360 pioneered a number of concepts that can still be seen in modern operating systems; some applications written for OS/360 are still usable on modern machines. One concept that was unique to the system was the fact that once a program was started, the system would keep track of all resources available, including storage, locks, data files and so on. When the process was terminated, the resources would all be reclaimed by the operating system. universite.