Hardware/Software Guidance
What is an Operating System (OS) and what does it do?
An operating system (OS) is an interface between hardware and the computer user. The OS is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the resources of a computer, that acts as a host for computing applications run on the machine. Common OSs include Linux, and its many flavors (Ubuntu, Debian, SUSE, Redhat, etc.), Microsoft Windows (XP, Vista, 7, etc.), Apple's Mac OSs (i.e., Mac OS X aka Snow Leopard).
