A system software component that is external to the operating system kernel. If the phrase is used to refer to the operating system itself, it is redundant because an operating system "is" software.

Your computer has an operating system, or OS. You may be using Microsoft Windows, Apple’s desktop Mac OS X, some variant distribution of Linux such as Ubuntu, Debian or OpenSUSE… or you may be mostly ...

An operating system is the essential software that's needed to run your computer's suite of software. Everything from video games to web browsing, basic word processing, and more is down thanks to the ...