Glossary


Operating Systemsearch for term

The software that controls the hardware and software applications on a computer.

The OS (Operating System) is the collection of software that controls the hardware and software applications on a computer. The OS manages and allocates the physical resources (CPU processing time, hard disk space, inputs from the keyboard, etc.) among the different applications that run on it. Examples of an OS are Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X.