Operating Systems

What are operating systems?

A laptop will only work if it has an operating system installed. There are various operating systems, such as Parallels and Windows. Our Windows operating system is an upgrade. To use it, you need a legal, working version of Windows installed on your laptop. SURFspot does not offer Linux, as it is an open-source operating system. You can purchase the Mac OS X operating system from Apple.

What can you do with an operating system?

Everyone has an operating system on their computer, but what can you actually do with it? An operating system does various things for you. For example, it manages data and programs. For example, when you’re writing a paper or a research proposal using a word processor, the operating system ensures that you can save it. Managing all your files is one of the tasks of an operating system. Without an operating system, you cannot print, copy, or move files, etc. These actions are carried out by various programs that work with the operating system. This also applies when, for example, you want to format a hard drive or another device. Formatting ensures that your hard drive, external hard drive, or DVD is ready to have data written to it. The operating system has programs to, for example, erase your external hard drive and then reformat it.