In the current world, we as a user are blown away with modern software. They have surrounded us to make our lives better. Therefore, knowingly or unknowingly, we use different software to lead our day-to-day activities efficiently and more reliably. Furthermore, with time, people are becoming more tech-savvy, and that's why the need for high-tech technologies and software support is constantly changing and increasing with the growing needs and demands of people. Today in the market, there are various types of software, which can be valuable for any user, even those who don't recognize these diverse types of software. Software has such a powerful impact on our lives, but many of you might be thinking, "what does software means" or "what are its various types that exist today?"

Let's quickly discover the definition and types of software in this tutorial.

What is Software?

"Software is a set of programs (sequence of instructions) that allows the users to perform a well-defined function or some specified task."

Software is responsible for directing all computer-related devices and instructing them regarding what and how the task is to be performed. However, the software is made up of binary language (composed of ones and zeros), and for a programmer writing the binary code would be a slow and tedious task. Therefore, software programmers write the software program in various human-readable languages such as Java, Python, C#, etc. and later use the source code.

Types of Software

Software's are broadly classified into two types, i.e., System Software and Application Software.

1. System Software

System software is a computer program that helps the user to run computer hardware or software and manages the interaction between them. Essentially, it is software that constantly runs in the computer background, maintaining the computer hardware and computer's basic functionalities, including the operating system, utility software, and interface. In simple terms, you can say that the system acts as a middle man that checks and facilitates the operations flowing between the user and the computer hardware.

System software is not limited to the operating system. They also include the basic I/O system procedures, the boot program, assembler, computer device driver, etc. This software supports a high-speed platform to provide effective software for the other applications to work in effortlessly. Therefore system software is an essential part of your computer system. They are the first thing that gets loaded in the system's memory wherever you turn on your computer. System software is also known as "low-level software" because the end-users do not operate them. Companies usually employ the best software development programmers who can deploy efficient system software.

The further classifications of system software are as follows:

1. Operating System

The operating system is the most prominent example of system software that acts as an interface between the user and system hardware. It is a group of software that handles the execution of programs and offers general services for the application that runs over the computer. There are various types of operating systems available in the market, such as embedded operating systems, real-time OS, distributed OS, single or multi-user operating system, mobile, Internet, and various others.

Some of the commonly used examples of operating systems are given below.

Microsoft Windows
Apple's iOS
Apple's MacOS
Android
CentOS
Linux
Ubuntu
Unix

2. Device Drivers

In computing, the device driver is a type of software that operates or controls some specific hardware devices linked to your system. They provide a software interface to hardware devices allowing computer operating systems and other applications to fetch hardware functions without knowing the exact specifications of the hardware. Some common examples of such device drivers that connect hardware devices (printers, sound cards, network cards, hard disks, floppy disk, keyboard, mouse, etc.) to a system easily are as follows:

BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) Device Driver
USB (Universal Serial Bus) Drivers
Motherboard Drivers
Display Drivers
Printer Drivers
Sound Card Driver
ROM (Read-only memory) Drivers
VGA (Video Graphic Array) Drivers

3. Firmware

In electronic systems and computing, firmware is a type of permanent software embedded in the system's ROM (read-only memory) to provide low-level control for some particular system device hardware. It is a set of instructions that are stored permanently on your computer's hardware device.

Common examples of devices utilizing firmware are given below:

Computer Peripherals
Consumer Appliances
Embedded Systems
UEFI (United Extensible Firmware Interface)
BIOS (Basic Input/Output System)

4. Utility

Utility software is developed to provide support in analyzing, optimizing, along configuring and maintaining a computer. The job of the utility program is to offer support to the system infrastructure. Though the system will work even if it doesn't have any utility software, the right kind of utility software enhances its performance and makes it more reliable.

Some of the common examples of utility software are as follows:

Norton and McAfee Antivirus
WinRAR
Directory Opus
Disk defragmenter
WinZip
Windows File Explorer
Razer Cortex

Application Software

Application programs or software applications are end-user computer programs developed primarily to provide specific functionality to the user. The applications programs assist the user in accomplishing numerous tasks such as doing online research, completing notes, designing graphics, managing the finances, watching a movie, writing documents, playing games, and many more. Therefore, many software applications are designed and developed every year by companies as per the demand and requirements of the potential users. The application software can either be designed for a general-purpose or specially coded as per the requirements of business cooperation.

Web Browsers

These are a type of software that is globally used to browse the Internet. Web browsers help the users in positioning as well as fetching data across the web. Common examples of web browsers are given below: