What is round-robin scheduling?

Question

In a multitasking operating system context, sometimes you hear the term round-robin scheduling. What does it refer to?
What other kind of scheduling is there?

Answer 1

Round Robin Scheduling

If you are a host in a party of 100 guests, round-robin scheduling would mean that you spend 1 minute (a fixed amount) per guest. You go through each guest one-by-one, and after 100 minutes, you would have spent 1 minute with each guest. More on Wikipedia.

There are many other types of scheduling, such as priority-based (i.e. most important people first), first-come-first-serve, earliest-deadline-first (i.e. person leaving earliest first), etc. You can start off by googling for scheduling algorithms or check out scheduling at Wikipedia