Each and every notebook or desktop or web server is run by an Operating System - the low-level program that communicates with the hardware, including peripheral devices such as a mouse and a printer, and any applications that are installed on the system. Any program input through a command line or a Graphical User Interface (GUI) is processed by sending an Application Program Interface (API) request to the Operating System. On a server, each application runs within the parameters specified by the OS as well - priority, physical memory, processing time, etc. This goes for both standard Internet site scripts and server-side software such as a media server. When a virtual server is set up on a physical one, there can be two different Operating Systems, named guest OS and host OS, which means that you'll be able to set up a different software environment on a single machine.
Multiple OS in Dedicated Servers
We offer three Operating Systems with our dedicated server solutions - CentOS, Ubuntu and Debian. They're all different Linux distributions and we offer them not only because they are free and they won't increase the price of your new hosting server, but also because they are exceptionally stable and secure. Each of them is backed up by a huge community of web developers, so you will be able to choose from many hundreds of software packages that you can install on your server in case the app that you would like to employ has certain requirements. The Operating System will also determine what hosting Control Panel you can use since the Control Panels that we offer are compatible with specific OSs only and since we want to give you as much freedom as possible, we offer a couple of OSs and multiple Control Panels. If you choose a server with a certain Operating System, we can change it upon request in the event that it turns out that you will need alternative one. We can also keep your OS updated on a weekly basis as a part of the additional Managed Services upgrade.