CHAPTER 5 · 2 lessons · 26 exercises
The OS and software
What the operating system is doing behind the scenes while your program runs.
What happens when you type node main.js? This is the story of the OS handing out CPU and memory to programs, and how it decides who gets what.
It covers processes and threads, the order in which the CPU is handed out (scheduling), memory management and virtual memory, file systems and absolute paths, and open source licences. It goes well with the command line course.
Lessons in this chapter
Processes and scheduling
- 11Sharing out a single CPUWhile you sit at
node main.js, the browser and the music carry on. There is only one CPU, so why do they look simultaneous? How the order gets decided, interrupts, and keeping two things off the same thing at once.Go to the exercises
Managing memory, and files
- 12Papering over not having enough memoryWhy a program larger than memory runs at all. Virtual memory and paging, choosing which page to evict, and where files live plus how they are backed up.Go to the exercises