An Operating System is the software which communicates with the hardware of a PC and functions 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 application, it transmits requests to the OS using an API (Application Program Interface) and the communication is done through a command line or a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Similar to a personal computer, web hosting servers also feature an Operating System which functions as a host for all the software installed on them, including script applications or server-side software such as a flash server, a VOIP server, and many others. A virtual machine can be set up on a physical one, so you will be able to install a guest OS on it and have a different system environment in contrast with the physical server host OS.

Multiple OS in Dedicated Servers

We offer three Operating Systems with our dedicated server plans - CentOS, Ubuntu and Debian. They're all different Linux distributions and we offer them not only because they're completely free and they will not increase the price of your new web server, but also because they are very stable and secure. Each of them is backed up by a big community of developers, so you'll be able to choose from thousands of software packages that you may install on your server in case the application that you intend to employ has specific requirements. The Operating System will also determine what internet hosting Control Panel you can use because the Control Panels that we offer run on specific OSs only and because we want to provide you with as much freedom as possible, we offer several OSs and multiple Control Panels. In case you choose a server with a certain Operating System, we could change it upon request if it turns out that you will need alternative one. We can also keep your OS updated on a weekly basis as part of our additional Managed Services upgrade.