An operating theater (also known as an operating room (OR), operating suite, or operation suite) is a facility within a hospital where surgical operations are carried out in an aseptic environment.

(operating rooms)

(operating theatres)

(operating systems)

An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.

<operating system> (OS) The low-level software which handles the interface to peripheral hardware, schedules tasks, allocates storage, and presents a default interface to the user when no application program is running. The OS may be split into a kernel which is always present and various system programs which use facilities provided by the kernel to perform higher-level house-keeping tasks, often acting as servers in a client-server relationship. Some would include a graphical user interface and {window system} as part of the OS, others would not. The {operating system loader}, BIOS, or other firmware required at {boot time} or when installing the operating system would generally not be considered part of the operating system, though this distinction is unclear in the case of a {rommable operating system} such as RISC OS. The facilities an operating system provides and its general design philosophy exert an extremely strong influence on programming style and on the technical cultures that grow up around the machines on which it runs. Example operating systems include 386BSD, AIX, AOS, Amoeba, Angel, Artemis microkernel, BeOS, Brazil, COS, CP/M, CTSS, Chorus, DACNOS, DOSEXEC 2, GCOS, GEORGE 3, GEOS, ITS, KAOS, Linux, LynxOS, MPV, MS-DOS, MVS, Mach, Macintosh operating system, Microsoft Windows, MINIX, Multics, Multipop-68, Novell NetWare, OS-9, OS/2, Pick, Plan 9, QNX, RISC OS, STING, System V, System/360, TOPS-10, TOPS-20, TRUSIX, TWENEX, TYMCOM-X, Thoth, Unix, VM/CMS, VMS, VRTX, VSTa, VxWorks, WAITS. {FAQ (ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/usenet/news-info/comp.os.research)}. Usenet newsgroup: news:comp.os.research. [Jargon File] (1999-06-09)

An operating temperature is the allowable temperature range of the local ambient environment at which an electrical or mechanical device operates. The device will operate effectively within a specified temperature range which varies based on the device function and application context, and ranges from the minimum operating temperature to the maximum operating temperature (or peak operating temperature). Outside this range of safe operating temperatures the device may fail.