Operating system

An operating system (OS) is an interface between the user and the computer hardware. This interface manages the basic software and hardware resources of a computer, to allow other software / hardware to interact with the computer's hardware. Examples include memory management, process management, and handling input / output device. 1

When the computer boots up, the operating system is the first thing it loads, in particular the kernel.

  1. https://www.tutorialspoint.com/operating_system/os_overview.htm ↩