Software and Operating Systems Basic Information

What is software?
Software is the general name given to all the programs that can be run on computer hardware. There are two main categories of software: operating systems (systems software) and applications software.
Operating systems (systems software):
An operating system is a program that controls the hardware directly. Operating systems perform the following tasks:
They provide a way for applications software to communicate with the hardware. For example, in your word-processing package, if you click on the printer icon, the operating system gives an instruction to the printer to st…