Intended Outcomes from CS 273
CS 273 (OS), Fall 2019
At the end of CS 273, Operating Systems (OS), we intend that students have:
Conceptual understanding of each of the four essential service areas of a modern computer operating system, namely processes, memory management, device management, and file systems;
Hands-on experience with each of those essential service areas, primarily through C programming on the Linux operating system;
Exposure to representative design choices and kernel implementation of each of those service areas in the case of Linux, and awareness of selected differences in the case of Windows and other operating systems;
Principles of computer security and protection mechanisms, with examples drawn primarily from the operating-systems level;
Experience with configuring and using virtual machines;
Introduction to systems programming, through projects to implement a shell (command-line interpreter) and a partial multithreaded web server;
Conceptual understanding of deadlock, and strategies for avoiding and preventing it; and
Kernel recompilation, structure, and modification, experienced through a kernel-programming project.