Operating Systems Study Guide: 88 Flashcards on Kernels, Processes, Threads and Virtual Memory

Intro-OS exams love to test the difference between two things that sound identical: process vs thread, paging vs segmentation, hardware vs software interrupt, cooperative vs preemptive multitasking. Flashcards are the right tool for that. The Operating Systems: Fundamentals & Processes deck (code FQ2585 on Flip It) packs 88 cards from a standard syllabus; here is what is inside and the order that makes the definitions reinforce each other.

The five themes in the deck

1. Kernel & modes: kernel, user mode vs kernel mode, system call, interrupt, hardware vs software interrupt, interrupt handler (ISR), interrupt vector table, DMA, polling, busy waiting, device driver, interrupt-driven I/O.
2. Processes & threads: process, process control block, thread, thread vs process, what a thread owns (ID, program counter, registers, stack) vs shares (code, heap), context switch, time slice, ready queue, cooperative vs preemptive multitasking, multiprogramming, time-sharing, parallelism, concurrency, kill() and the 7 Unix signal categories, reader/writer problem.
3. Memory: memory protection, segmentation vs paging, segmentation violation, general protection fault, virtual memory, page fault, swapping, cooperative memory management (and why it disappeared), buffer overflow, ASLR.
4. Storage & I/O: file system, absolute vs relative path, fragmentation, RAID, cache, prefetching, memory buffer, device-status table, hard drives vs flash.
5. Architectures, security & history: monolithic kernel, microkernel, unikernel, library OS, hypervisor, embedded OS, real-time OS (hard vs soft), distributed and multicomputer systems, CIA triad, principle of least authority, OS/360, MULTICS, UNIX, POSIX, CP/M, Windows NT, Android/Bionic.

Ten cards, straight from the deck

Study tips specific to this material

Study the deck as a chain of "why" questions. Interrupts exist because I/O devices are slower than the CPU (the deck has that card). Interrupts need a handler, hence the interrupt vector table; handlers run in kernel mode, hence user mode. Page faults are interrupts too, which ties the memory block back to the kernel block. Narrate that chain and the 88 cards collapse into a dozen ideas.

Beware the deliberate near-duplicates. Kernel, process, swapping, time-sharing, context switch and thread resources each appear twice with different wording, exactly as exam questions do. Treat each pair as one concept you can answer from either prompt.

Use the history cards as a mnemonic ladder: OS/360 (multiprogramming) → MULTICS (many users) → UNIX (single user, source available) → POSIX (the standard) → CP/M (microcomputers) → Windows NT (VAX/VMS heritage) → Android (Linux kernel + Bionic). Seven rungs, one sentence each.

Pace: themes 1-2 in week one (the core of any midterm), 3-4 in week two, theme 5 plus the shuffled deck in week three.

If you want the hands-on side to go with the theory, our Linux command line study guide covers ps, kill, chmod and the other commands that make these concepts concrete. Otherwise, sign in to Flip It, search the library for Operating Systems: Fundamentals & Processes (FQ2585) and start with theme 1.