You may have heard of UNIX, Windows and Mac OS, but what is an operating system and what does it do? The operating system is like the backbone of the computer. An operating system is the primary software that organizes and controls all the hardware, functions, operations and software programs of a computer.

A computer usually comes with an operating system preinstalled. The type of operating system depends on the computer that has been purchased. Generally most computers come with a Microsoft Windows operating system. There are two other operating systems that compete on the market, Apple's OS X and the various Linux distributions. Unix and Linux dominate the server market on the other hand.

Operating systems are in all kinds of products that we use, not just computers. Operating systems are used by video game consoles, cell phones, PDA's and more.

Software and hardware are managed by the operating system which controls all the functions and features of them. It manages the communication between applications and the computer hardware. It also makes sure that software and hardware will not run into conflicts while running on a computer system.

It is also responsible for effectively managing the usage of the various hardware components in your computer such as memory and storage.

The operating system provides the software programs with hardware information which means that the applications do not have to add their own routines to work with the hardware. The operating system manages all hardware of a computer system.

As the central component of a computer system the operating system manages data transfer between hardware and software. Pressing a key on the keyboard is for instance directed to several hardware components like the processor and video card so that the result can be outputted on the computer screen.

Security is another part of any operating system. They are usually making use of so called computer profiles which are associated with one user or a user group. Authorization can take place locally but also over a computer network or the Internet. Users and user group can have different authorization levels enabling or permitting them from using certain functions and features of the operating system.