Systems Software

          System software is computer software designed to operate the computer hardware and to provide a platform for running application software. System software refers to the files and programs that make up your computer's operating system. System files include libraries of functions, system services, drivers for printers and other hardware, system preferences, and other configuration files.

The programs that are part of the system software include assemblers, compilers, file management tools, system utilites, and debuggers. The system software is installed on your computer when you install your operating system. You can update the software by running programs such as "Windows Update" for Windows or "Software Update" for Mac OS X. Unlike application programs, however, system software is not meant to be run by the end user. For example, while you might use your Web browser every day, you probably don't have much use for an assembler program (unless, of course, you are a computer programmer).

Since system software runs at the most basic level of your computer, it is called "low-level" software. It generates the user interface and allows the operating system to interact with the hardware. Fortunately, you don't have to worry about what the system software is doing since it just runs in the background. It's nice to think you are working at a "high-level" anyway.

Four types of programs

1.Operating System

An operating system (OS) is software, consisting of programs and data, that runs on computers and manages computer hardware resources and provides common services for efficient execution of various application software. The most important program that runs on a computer. Every general-purpose computer must have an operating system to run other programs. Operating systems perform basic tasks, such as recognizing input from the keyboard, sending output to the display screen, keeping track of files and directories on the disk, and controlling peripheral devices such as disk drives and printers.

For large systems, the operating system has even greater responsibilities and powers. It is like a traffic cop ,it makes sure that different programs and users running at the same time do not interfere with each other. The operating system is also responsible for security, ensuring that unauthorized users do not access the system.

For hardware functions such as input and output and memory allocation, the operating system acts as an intermediary between application programs and the computer hardware, although the application code is usually executed directly by the hardware and will frequently call the OS or be interrupted by it. Operating systems are found on almost any device that contains a computer—from cellular phones and video game consoles to supercomputers and web servers.

Examples of popular modern operating systems for personal computers are Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and Mac OS X.

2.Utility software

Utility software is a kind of system software designed to help analyze, configure, optimize and maintain the computer. A single piece of utility software is usually called a or tool.

Utility software should be contrasted with application software, which allows users to do things like creating text documents, playing games, listening to music or surfing the web. Rather than providing these kinds of user-oriented or output-oriented functionality, utility software usually focuses on how the computer infrastructure (including the computer hardware, operating system, application software and data storage) operates.

Due to this focus, utilities are often rather technical and targeted at people with an advanced level of computer knowledge.

Most utilities are highly specialized and designed to perform only a single task or a small range of tasks. However, there are also some utility suites that combine several features in one piece of software. Most major operating systems come with several pre-installed utilities. The examples of Utility software are as follows;Text Editor,Disk defragmenters, System Profilers,  Virus scanners, Application launchers, Network manager,  Encryption utilities.

3. Device driver

Device driver or software driver is a computer program allowing higher-level computer programs to interact with a hardware device. A driver typically communicates with the device through the computer bus or communications subsystem to which the hardware connects. When a calling program invokes a routine in the driver, the driver issues commands to the device. Once the device sends data back to the driver, the driver may invoke routines in the original calling program. Drivers are hardware-dependent and operating-system-specific. They usually provide the interrupt handling required for any necessary asynchronous time-dependent hardware interface.

It simplifies programming by acting as translator between a hardware device and the applications or operating systems that use it. Programmers can write the higher-level application code independently of whatever specific hardware device.Because of the diversity of modern hardware and operating systems, drivers operate in many different environments. 

Drivers may interface with:

• printers
• video adapters
• network cards
• sound cards
• image scanners
• digital cameras

Common levels of abstraction for device drivers include:

• for hardware:
• interfacing directly
• writing to or reading from a device control register
• using some higher-level interface (e.g. Video BIOS)
• using another lower-level device driver (e.g. file system drivers using disk drivers)
• simulating work with hardware, while doing something entirely different
• for software:
• allowing the operating system direct access to hardware resources
• implementing only primitives
• implementing an interface for non-driver software (e.g. TWAIN)
• implementing a language, sometimes quite high-level (e.g. PostScript)

Choosing and installing the correct device drivers for given hardware is often a key component of computer system configuration.

4.Language Translation

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