An Operating System is the software which interacts with the hardware of a PC and serves as the intermediary between the installed applications and the hardware, including peripheral devices such as a printer, a computer mouse or a keyboard. When you run an app, it transmits requests to the OS using 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, web hosting servers also feature an Operating System that acts as a host for the software installed on them, which includes script apps or server-side software such as a flash server, a VOIP server, and so on. A virtual machine can be set up on a physical one, so you could install a guest OS on it and have a different system environment in contrast to the physical server host OS.
Multiple OS in Dedicated Servers
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 completely free so they won't increase the low price of your new web server, but also because they are very stable and secure. Each of them is supported by a vast community of web developers, so you will be able to choose from countless software packages that you may install on your server if the app that you intend to work with has specific requirements. The Operating System will also determine what hosting Control Panel you can use since the Control Panels that we offer are compatible with specific OSs only and because we would like to provide you with as much freedom as possible, we offer a couple of OSs and multiple Control Panels. If you get a server with a certain Operating System, we will change it upon request in the event that it turns out that you need alternative one. We can also keep your OS updated on a weekly basis as a part of the useful Managed Services upgrade.