An Operating System is the low-level software which manages a computer. It takes care of the way the hardware behaves, the communication with peripherals like a monitor, a printer or a keyboard, the allocation of memory between your applications, and the prioritization of applications in case several run at the same time. Every program that's installed on a desktop or a laptop functions by sending requests to the OS for different services using an application program interface (API). The interaction with the OS can be achieved via a Graphical User Interface (GUI) or a command line. In the hosting field, the Operating System is what commands a hosting server together with any software installed on it, which includes not only website scripts, but, in addition every other application such as a VOIP or a game server. When there are virtual machines created, they work with a guest OS that runs on the server host OS.
Multiple OS in Dedicated Servers
We offer three Operating Systems with our dedicated server plans - CentOS, Ubuntu and Debian. They're all different Linux distributions and we offer them not only because they are free so they won't increase the cost of your new server, but also because they are really stable and secure. Each one of them is supported by a huge community of developers, so you'll be able to choose from many hundreds of software packages that you could install on your server if the application that you want to employ has specific requirements. The Operating System will also determine what hosting Control Panel you can use as the Control Panels that we offer are compatible with particular OSs only and because we want to provide you with as much flexibility as possible, we offer several OSs and multiple Control Panels. In case you get a server with a certain OS, we will change it upon request in case it turns out that you'll need a different one. We can also keep your OS updated on a weekly basis as a part of the additional Managed Services upgrade.