An operating system (OS) is software that manages computer hardware and software resources and provides common services for computer programs. Operating systems are an essential medium between the computer hardware and applications. Popular operating systems include Microsoft Windows, Linux, MacOS, Unix, BSD, and Solaris. OS Versions may include Windows 7, Windows 8, MacOS 10.9 Mavericks, and RHEL 7.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a Linux distribution developed by Red Hat and targeted toward the commercial market. It is often abbreviated to RHEL, although this is not an official designation.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is frequently used to power high security, high availability, and large scale servers across the enterprise and the internet. Red Hat systems are also frequently used as a platform for large database systems like Oracle and ERP systems like Banner.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is built from open source software, but the Red Hat Enterprise distribution is built with support comments that are licensed with a subscription cost. For a free open source alternative that is identical minus the support, look at CentOS.
