Любой персональный компьютер представляет сложное electronic device consisting of component parts. All of them together form the hardware (hardware). Drawing an analogy with living things, hardware is a physical body. To control them, the presence of something intangible is necessary: soul, mind, spark - in this case it does not matter. In computer technology such intangible component is the system and application software (software, software). Without programs, a computer seems to be a useless pile of electronic components. All of the above is true for laptops, netbooks, many mobile devices, etc.
Software is all those programswhich work on the hardware configuration used. They are subdivided into several conditional types that define the purpose and functionality.
System software is the foundation.It determines to a great extent the ways of implementing the work of any programs launched. It can be represented as a combination of programs interacting with each other, whose main task is to manage the hardware components of the computer (processor, multimedia adapters, RAM). The term “PC system software” is often understood to mean an operating system (OS), although this is only partially true. The system software, in fact, acts as a kind of "layer" between the computer hardware and user application programs. In modern systems, no running application can directly interact with components, in contrast to the DOS times, when this approach was predominant. The application is now required to conform to certain rules and to be written using well-defined programming tools designed for the operating system being used. That is why Windows programs cannot work in Linux environment (and vice versa), although in both cases these operating systems regularly manage hardware components and provide a convenient graphical interface for interacting with the user. System software interprets and implements control commands for any hardware component from applications. In addition, modern computer operating systems are interactive, allowing the user to partially adjust their work.
System software is notonly type of programs. There is also application software. User programs, just define the application environment. For example, for working with graphics, they use the environment of a graphic editor, for text documents - the corresponding editor, for a game - an application game environment, etc. A certain application software does not necessarily have to solve only a strictly limited range of tasks: it is not uncommon for various specialized small applications to be run through the program interface. Often, applications are called “applications”, which very precisely defines their essence, because the basis for them is system software that ensures the performance of applications.
Amazing fact:launching any application program, the user, in fact, begins the process of interaction with the hardware components of the computer. For example, by enabling the playback of the song in the audio player, the user commands the system and application software to output the sound through the sound card.
