Back to Basics: Getting Cozy With Your BIOS and OS

By David Sandy

August 05, 2024

Blog

Back to Basics: Getting Cozy With Your BIOS and OS

We’ve come a long way in our journey through your computer. Today we’ll be ending that journey by discussing some of the firmware and software that helps your computer run.

Welcome to Back to Basics, a series where we’re going to be reviewing basic engineering concepts that may require a more complex explanation than a quick Google search could provide.

If the Boot(up) Fits

In our first article of this “Getting Cozy” series, we mentioned the BIOS as a good example of computer firmware, and said that it helps with the boot process for your computer. Now that you have a stronger overall understanding of the hardware behind this firmware, let’s revisit how exactly the BIOS does its job.

As a refresher, the BIOS (basic input output system) is a piece of firmware that lives on your computer and is stored on non-volatile memory (NVM) on the motherboard of your computer.

If you’ll recall, there are multiple ways that your computer stores data, the primary two being RAM and hard drive. RAM is volatile, meaning that if your computer turns off, all of the data in RAM goes away. Hard drive storage is non-volatile, meaning that it is a more permanent storage solution.

Because BIOS is firmware, rather than software, it gets its own special memory chip all to itself. The hard drive is generally used to store software data, and while it is a non-volatile solution, it can be wiped, reset, reformatted, or otherwise erased by the user in order for new or different software to be stored on it.

Since the BIOS is essential to allow the computer to boot, it’s vital that it’s nearly impossible to erase due to user error. So, what makes the BIOS so special? The BIOS has a couple jobs: managing hardware connections to software, and bringing up the OS.

A simple way to think of the BIOS is as a bridge between the physical hardware of your computer, which you can see and touch, and the invisible software that runs on your computer.

Everything is (OS)ome

The OS (Operating System) is kind of like the BIOS’s older sibling. As part of the boot up process done by the BIOS, the OS is brought online. While the BIOS is firmware, the OS is software stored on your hard drive. The main job of the OS is to act as a bridge between the hardware handles that the BIOS provides and the software that you run on your computer.

While that may seem like a simple task, a modern OS comes packaged with a bunch of other important software that helps with that job, making them rather complex. Rather than try to explain the OS from a conceptual standpoint, it may be simpler to understand them by looking at the three biggest OSs in use today: Windows, MacOS, and Linux.

Each of these do the same basic job of allowing software to run on your hardware, but they also provide a graphical user interface to ease everyday use. Everything from your sound controls and file manager to startup and desktop are managed by the OS.

Each of the “big three” take a different stance on user control. Mac is designed to be user-friendly, but can make it difficult to dig into the inner workings; Windows takes a middle ground approach and allows users to get into the code to some extent while still providing a simple UI; and Linux is entirely customizable, with an Open Source Code, but the UI can can harder to get used to or use for novices.

With that, we’ve reached the end of this journey into the world of your computer. Hopefully with the information you’ve learned, computers are a little less mystifying.