Silbershatz, Galvin, Gagne, Operating System Concepts.
An operating sytem is software that manages the computer hardware
... [it provides] an environment in which a user can execute
prgrams in a convenient and efficent manner.
An operating system must fulfill two main objectives:
Bovet, Cesati, Understanding the Linux Kernel
What is an operating system?
Frans Kaashoek
The kernel is one of the programs in an operating system -
the program that allocates the machine's resources
to the other programs that are running. The kernel also takes care
of starting and stopping other programs.
Richard Stallman
An operating system, as we use the term, means a collection of
programs that are sufficient to use the computer to do a wide
variety of jobs. A general purpose operating system, to be complete,
ought to handle all the jobs that many users may want to do.