An Operating System is the basic software that manages a PC. It handles the way your hardware functions, the communication with peripheral devices such as a monitor, a printer or a keyboard, the allocation of memory between apps, as well as the prioritization of applications if multiple ones run at the same time. Every program that is installed on a desktop or a notebook functions by sending requests to the OS for various services via an application program interface (API). The interaction with the OS can be achieved using a Graphical User Interface (GUI) or a command line. In the web hosting field, the Operating System is what controls a hosting server along with all the software installed on it, which includes not only website scripts, but also any other application for instance a VOIP or a game server. When there are virtual machines created, they employ a guest OS that is run on the server host OS.
Multiple OS in Dedicated Hosting
We offer three Operating Systems with our dedicated server packages - CentOS, Ubuntu and Debian. They're all different Linux distributions and we offer them not only because they're free so they will not increase the cost of your new web hosting server, but also because they are very stable and secure. Each one of them is supported by a huge community of web developers, so you'll be given the option to choose from many hundreds of software packages that you could install on your server if the app that you intend to work with has certain requirements. The Operating System will also determine what web hosting Control Panel you can use since the Control Panels that we offer run on specific OSs only and since we want to give you as much versatility as possible, we offer multiple OSs and multiple Control Panels. In case you choose a server with a given Operating System, we can change it upon request in the event that it turns out that you need a different one. We can also keep the OS updated weekly as a part of the additional Managed Services upgrade.