Each PC or web server is run by an Operating System - the low-level program that communicates with the computer hardware, including peripheral devices such as a mouse and a printer, as well as any applications that are currently installed on your 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, any app runs within the parameters established by the OS as well - priority, physical memory, processing time, etcetera. This goes for both standard website scripts and server-side software like a media server. When a virtual server is generated on a physical one, there can be two separate Operating Systems, called guest OS and host OS, so you can set up a different software environment on a single machine.
Multiple OS in VPS Servers
If you choose to buy one of our VPS server plans, you shall be able to pick one of the three Linux releases which we supply for the Operating System of the servers - CentOS, Ubuntu and Debian. These are among the most popular and most dependable server OSs on the market and we offer them in order to give you a choice for the software environment of your machine in case that you wish to install some app with particular requirements with regards to the packages that must be present on the web hosting server. We also offer three internet hosting Control Panels and which one of them you could use will depend on the OS that you've selected. We leave the chance to change the server Operating System open, so when you want to use an app that requires an OS different from the one that's already present, we can always reinstall the VPS. In addition, we can keep the OS up-to-date on a weekly basis by installing all of the security updates that may be released.
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 are cost-free so they will not increase the price of your new server, but also because they are very secure and stable. Each of them is supported by a large community of web developers, so you'll be given the option to choose from a large number software packages that you could install on your server if the app that you would like to work with has certain requirements. The Operating System will also determine what web hosting Control Panel you can use since the Control Panels that we offer are compatible with specific OSs only and because we would like to give you as much flexibility as possible, we offer a couple of OSs and multiple Control Panels. If you choose a server with a given OS, we can change it upon request in case it turns out that you will need another one. We can also keep the OS updated weekly as a part of our useful Managed Services upgrade.