An Operating System is the software that communicates with the hardware of a PC and works as the intermediary between applications and the hardware, which includes peripherals such as a printer, a mouse or a keyboard. When you run an app, it transmits requests to the OS through an API (Application Program Interface) and the contact is done via a command line or a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Similar to a personal computer, hosting servers also feature an Operating System which serves as a host for all of the software installed on them, which includes script apps or server-side software such as a flash server, a VOIP server, etc. A virtual machine can be created on a physical one, so it is possible to install a guest OS on it and have a different system environment in contrast with the physical server host Operating System.
Multiple OS in Dedicated Hosting
We offer three Operating Systems with our dedicated server solutions - CentOS, Ubuntu and Debian. They are all different Linux distributions and we offer them not only because they're totally free so they won't increase the price of your new web server, but also because they are really stable and secure. Each of them is supported by a big community of developers, so you'll be given the option to choose from many hundreds of software packages that you can install on your server in case the app that you intend to employ has certain requirements. The Operating System will also determine what hosting Control Panel you can use because the Control Panels that we offer run on specific OSs only and because we would like to provide you with as much versatility as possible, we offer a couple of OSs and multiple Control Panels. If you get a server with a given OS, we can change it upon request in the event that it turns out that you will need another one. We can also keep your OS updated weekly as a part of the useful Managed Services upgrade.