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…