An Operating System is the software which communicates with the hardware of a computer and is the intermediary between the installed applications and the hardware, which includes peripherals such as a printer, a computer mouse or a keyboard. When you run software, it sends requests to the OS through an API (Application Program Interface) and the communication is done through a command line or a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Just like a personal computer, hosting servers also have an Operating System which serves as a host for the software installed on them, which includes script applications or server-side software such as a flash server, a VOIP server, and many others. A virtual machine can be generated on a physical one, so you will be able to install a guest OS on it and have a different system environment compared to the physical server host Operating System.

Multiple OS in Dedicated Servers

We offer three Operating Systems with our dedicated server packages - CentOS, Ubuntu and Debian. They are all different Linux distributions and we offer them not only because they're cost-free and they will not increase the price of your new web server, but also because they are outstandingly stable and secure. Each of them is backed up by a huge community of developers, so you'll be able to choose from a myriad of software packages that you may install on your server if the app that you intend to employ has specific requirements. The Operating System will also determine what web hosting Control Panel you can use since the Control Panels that we offer are compatible with specific OSs only and because we want 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 Operating System, we can change it upon request in case it turns out that you'll need another one. We will also keep your OS updated weekly as part of the optional Managed Services upgrade.