It is a laudable trait of technical texts to progress from basic to advanced, from simple to complex, from axioms to deductions. Unfortunately, it seems pretty much impossible to explain a contemporary operating system in this way - when speaking about processes, one should say how a process gets started, but that involves memory mapped files - when speaking about memory mapped files, one should say how a page fault gets handled, but that involves devices and interrupts - when speaking about devices and interrupts, one should say how a process context gets switched, but that involves processes - and so on. This text therefore starts with a look at historic perspective and basic concepts, which gives context to the text that follows. There, forward and backward references are used shamelessly :-).