Multitasking operating system

A concept of managing a multitude of simultaneously active programs, competing with each other for accessing the system resources is known as multitasking. The first multitasking operating systems evolved during 1960s.

A multitasking operating system can handle multiple tasks together by applying multiprogramming techniques. Multitasking works by time slicing - that is, allowing multiple programs to use tiny slices of the processor’s time, one after the other.

When one process of a particular program has finished utilizing the CPU and is ready to I/O operations, the CPU is allocated to a process of another program which needs execution.

The multitasking operating systems are also known as by several other names, such as multiprocessing, multiprogramming, concurrent or process scheduling operating systems. Examples of multitasking operating systems are UNIX, Windows, Linus etc.

Multitasking helps in increasing the overall performance of the computer. In addition it also helps increasing the overall productivity of the user by performing a number of tasks at the same time.
Multitasking operating system