What Does OS Mean

what is operating system

In this article I’m going to help you understand a common computer term: “operating system”, or “OS”.

Maybe you’ve found yourself with questions and wonder what is operating system, if so, you’re not the only one.

This actually can be a pretty easy concept to understand when it’s explained right, as you’ll discover by the time you finish reading this computer dictionary article.

Let me begin by mentioning first that an OS or operating system is a type of software.

If you aren’t sure what I mean by software, let me explain:

“Software” would be all of the parts of the computer that you really can’t observe or touch directly. Software would include things like Microsoft Excel, an email program like Outlook, Windows or the Mac OS, plus all of your own files like individual emails, pictures, songs, etc.

Here’s another way to think about it: hardware is like your brain, a physical part of your body, while software is like your mind or your thoughts — the non-physical part of yourself.

Software runs on hardware, just like your thoughts “run on” your brain.

Are you getting the idea now? So let’s look at the operating system specifically.

So, let me give a couple of examples:  the two best known OS right now are Windows, and Mac OS X (pronounced “Oh Ess Ten” — as in the Roman numeral ten).

Windows XP and Windows Vista are two versions of Windows.  While Mac OS 10.4 (also called “Tiger”) and the newer Mac OS 10.5 (also known as “Leopard”) are a couple examples of versions of Mac OS X.

OK, so what is an OS?

Think of it this way: when a baby is born, they have the instinct to eat, to breathe, and so on, and they also have the instinct to watch, listen and soak up everything going on around them.

as the years go by, a young person learns to talk and walk by watching others, and as they grow up, they also learn more fundamental skills like reading and writing, hand-eye coordination, etc.

So in other words, they gradually transition from being able to do not a lot except eat, sleep, and fill diapers, to physical and mental maturity where they have all the general skills they need to learn more specific skills such as driving a car, playing a sport like basketball, writing an essay for school, working a job — you get the idea.

In many ways, when you start up a computer, it’s kind of like a newborn baby, only having one or two basic “instincts.”

It can turn on, and show an image on the screen, but that’s about it.

The only other thing the computer can do is check the hard drive, and if it finds the files it needs there, the computer can start up.

This is called “booting”, which is what happens between when you turn the computer on, and when you’re able to actually start using it.

So in other words, it’s just like a child being born and growing up: the operating system has the “life experiences” and lessons that give a “child” all the basic skills equivalent to walking, talking, reading, writing, etc., that allow everything else to hapen.

So it’s kind ofas if your PC is “born” and “grows up” in the space of 30 seconds to a minute or so (or longer for some computers) that it takes to “boot” the OS.

So in other words, the OS is like those underlying skills we all have and learned as we matured. More precisely, it’s the software on your computer that displays its desktop, your icons on it, moves the little mouse pointer around on the screen as you move your mouse around,allows you to work with files, lets you type, — you get the idea.

Without the OS, you couldn’t do anything with the computer but push the power button and see an unhelpful message like “non system disk or disk error” on a Microsoft Windows computer, or a flashing question mark on one of Apple’s Macintosh PCs.

So even though most people don’t fully understand what an OS is, or what it’s for, no-one could use a computer without having one.

Make sense?