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 …showed first 75 words of 628 total…

…showed last 75 words of 628 total…Graphical user interface: A graphical user interface (GUI) provides a way for the user to communicate with the computer through icons and through pull-down menus. Windows is an example of a GUI. Windows provides a common way of using programs, which makes them easier to learn. It also takes care of some common shores such as working with the printer and the disk drive. Apple Macintosh computers were amongst the first to use a GUI.