This course is about two things, really. One is Operating Systems themselves. How they work; what (in detail) they do, and how (in principle) they are written.
The other main element is a pile of assorted techniques and algorithms which are generally regarded as part of an study of operating systems, but which also apply to other areas of computing. Concurrency, for example, running more that one program at once, is becoming a widely used programming technique (witness how in Netscape, the page downloads while you are still able to select menus, and several images may be loaded concurrently). We cover several aspects of concurrent programming, and memory and file management strategies.