What is software?
Software is the collection of instructions which makes the computer work. For instance, when you type in words via the keyboard, the software is responsible for displaying the correct letters, in the correct place on the screen. Software is held either on your computer’s hard disk, CD‐ROM, DVD or on a diskette (floppy disk) and is loaded (i.e. copied) from the disk into the computers RAM (Random Access Memory), as and when required.
What is an operating system?
The operating system is a special type of program which loads automatically when you start your computer. The operating system allows you to use the advanced features of a modern computer without having to learn all the details of how the hardware works. There are a number of different types of operating system in common use. The IBM PC (Personal Computer) was introduced way back in 1981 and was originally supplied with an operating system called DOS (Disk Operating System). This operating system was very basic, and you had to be a bit of a computer expert just to understand how to use it. It was NOT user‐friendly. Later on, Microsoft introduced Windows and this is the operating system which is most widely used on PCs today. To complicate matters further, there
are a number of different types of Windows. Most people are today running either Windows XP or Windows Vista.
IBM produced an operating system called OS/2 but this was largely ignored and is only used by a few companies.
UNIX and Linux are other examples of operating systems which may be run on PCs. Other types of computers, such as those manufactured by Apple have a completely different operating system.
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