How is the difference between a process and program significant for serial operating systems?

Answer

A program contains a series of routines and subroutines, which together are called an Application. An Operating System contains routines and processes. Applications and the Operating System use processes to perform operations that are native to the machine that it is being executed on.

For example, let's say that I write a program to print my name on a printer. I might write one routine to capture my name on the screen and another routine to print it on the printer. I might write one subroutine to rearrange the first and last names from the screen in the screen routine. I might write another subroutine to convert the captured letters to fancy script to be printed.

In retrieving this information from the screen, I need to tell the Operating System that I need this data. The OS will in turn spawn a process that gets the data for me. Why does the Operating System spawn the process to do this for me? Because he is the guy who knows what type of terminal and keyboard that I have. My program only knows that it wants to retrieve the data from a terminal and to print it to a printer. The OS always knows what devices are attached.

In printing the data, it's the same thing. Eventually the OS is sent a command to spawn a process to print the data.

Like to know what programs (Applications) are running on your machine right now? Simply hold down the <cntl> and <alt> keys together and tap the <Del> key with them. A window will appear. Click on the "Applications" key and the programs (applications) currently running will appear. The application that you are curently running will be highlighted. Click on the "Processes" tab and you will see the processes currently running. The process that you are currently running will be highlighted. When you are finished looking, just click the "X" to close the task. DO NOT click anything else or you may kill a necessary process ad need to restart Windows!

Hope this helps! Take care.

First answer by Skyway. Last edit by Skyway. Contributor trust: 126 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 21 [recommend question]