An Operating System is the fundamental software which manages a PC. It controls the way the hardware functions, the communication with peripheral devices including a monitor, a printer or a keyboard, the allocation of memory between apps, along with the prioritization of applications when several run concurrently. Every program which is installed on a desktop or a laptop functions by sending requests to the OS for different services using an application program interface (API). The communication with the OS can be done via a Graphical User Interface (GUI) or a command line. In the Internet hosting field, the Operating System is what runs a server together with all the software installed on it, which includes not only website scripts, but, in addition any other application for example a VOIP or a game server. In case there're virtual machines created, they use a guest OS which is run 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 totally free so they will not increase the cost of your new web hosting server, but also because they are outstandingly stable and secure. Each of them is supported by a huge community of developers, so you will be able to choose from many hundreds of software packages that you may install on your server if the application that you want to use has specific requirements. The Operating System will also determine what web hosting Control Panel you can use since the Control Panels that we offer run on particular OSs only and since we would like to provide you with as much versatility as possible, we offer a couple of OSs and multiple Control Panels. In case you get a server with a certain Operating System, we could change it upon request in case it turns out that you'll need alternative one. We could also keep your OS updated on a weekly basis as part of the useful Managed Services upgrade.