What characteristic does multitasking allow operating systems to display?

Multitasking enables an operating system to manage the execution of multiple processes simultaneously, providing the illusion that they are running at the same time. This characteristic is primarily achieved through preemptive execution. With preemptive execution, the operating system can interrupt a currently running process to allocate CPU time to another process, ensuring that all active processes receive adequate attention and that the system remains responsive.

This approach is fundamental for multitasking as it allows the operating system to prioritize tasks, allocate resources dynamically, and manage CPU time efficiently. As a result, users can run several applications concurrently without noticeable delay. This is in contrast to other methods such as sequential processing, which would execute tasks one after another, or batch processing, which groups tasks together to be executed in batches without user interaction. Additionally, single-threaded execution refers to a scenario where only one process runs at a time, which does not allow for multitasking. Thus, preemptive execution is crucial for enabling the multitasking capability of modern operating systems.