Bascially a professional badass, the Liam Neson's of the engineering world. These guys do the shit you can't, fix the shit you can't, and run the shit you can't. Typically paid over 100,000 a year, these are the people that keep your world running.
Abbreviated "OS", an operating system is software that provides the user with an interface as well as hardware support and support to run and use applications. Operating systems also accept input and display output by communicating with hardware and interacting with any respective applications or system software that might be using that hardware.
Windows, Windows NT, MacOS, UNIX, Novell Netware, DOS, BSD and BeOS are all examples of operating systems. Linux on the other hand, is a kernel.