Operating system technical interview questions and answers help students and job seekers understand core computing concepts that are essential for technical interviews. The operating system acts as a bridge between hardware and software, making it one of the fundamental subjects tested in campus placement interviews. Recruiters frequently ask questions about process management, memory allocation, deadlocks, scheduling algorithms, threads, file systems, and OS architecture. These OS interview questions appear repeatedly in companies like TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Cognizant, Capgemini, and Accenture. This guide explains the most commonly asked OS interview questions with easy-to-understand answers, practical examples, and simple definitions. Whether you are preparing for your first job, a technical round, or a written placement test, understanding OS concepts will help you perform confidently. You can also practice mock questions or download PDFs to strengthen your preparation.
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111. Distributed Systems?
Distribute the computation among several physical processors.
Loosely coupled system each processor has its own local memory; processors communicate with one another through various communications lines, such as high-speed buses or telephone lines
Advantages of distributed systems:
->Resources Sharing
->Computation speed up load sharing
->Reliability
->Communications
112. Difference between Primary storage and secondary storage?
Main memory: only large storage media that the CPU can access directly.
Secondary storage: extension of main memory that provides large nonvolatile storage capacity.
113. What is CPU Scheduler?
->Selects from among the processes in memory that are ready to execute, and allocates the CPU to one of them.
->CPU scheduling decisions may take place when a process:
1.Switches from running to waiting state.
2.Switches from running to ready state.
3
114. What do you mean by deadlock?
Deadlock is a situation where a group of processes are all blocked and none of them can become unblocked until one of the other becomes unblocked.The simplest deadlock is two processes each of which is waiting for a message from the other
115. What is Dispatcher?
->Dispatcher module gives control of the CPU to the process selected by the short-term scheduler; this involves:
Switching context
Switching to user mode
Jumping to the proper location in the user program to restart that program
Dispatch latency t
116. What is Throughput, Turnaround time, waiting time and Response time?
Throughput number of processes that complete their execution per time unit
Turnaround time amount of time to execute a particular process
Waiting time amount of time a process has been waiting in the ready queue
Response time amount of time it takes from when a request was submitted until the first response is produced, not output (for time-sharing environment)
117. Explain the difference between microkernel and macro kernel?
Micro-Kernel: A micro-kernel is a minimal operating system that performs only the essential functions of an operating system. All other operating system functions are performed by system processes.
Monolithic: A monolithic operating system is one where all operating system code is in a single executable image and all operating system code runs in system mode.
118. What is the cause of thrashing? How does the system detect thrashing? Once it detects thrashing, what can the system do to eliminate this problem?
Thrashing is caused by under allocation of the minimum number of pages required by a process, forcing it to continuously page fault. The system can detect thrashing by evaluating the level of CPU utilization as compared to the level of multiprogramming. It can be eliminated by reducing the level of multiprogramming.
119. Under what circumstances do page faults occur? Describe the actions taken by the operating system when a page fault occurs?
A page fault occurs when an access to a page that has not been brought into main memory takes place. The operating system verifies the memory access, aborting the program if it is invalid. If it is valid, a free frame is located and I/O is requested to read the needed page into the free frame. Upon completion of I/O, the process table and page table are updated and the instruction is restarted
120. Explain Segmentation with paging?
Segments can be of different lengths, so it is harder to find a place for a segment in memory than a page. With segmented virtual memory, we get the benefits of virtual memory but we still have to do dynamic storage allocation of physical memory. In order to avoid this, it is possible to combine segmentation and paging into a two-level virtual memory system. Each segment descriptor points to page table for that segment.This give some of the advantages of paging (easy placement) with some of the