OSers

OSers refers to individuals who have a strong interest in operating systems (OS) and their internals. They often engage with multiple OS families, experiment with different kernels, bootloaders, filesystems, virtualization, and system instrumentation. The term is used informally across online communities and in some technical discourse to identify hobbyists and professionals who foreground practical knowledge of how OSes work rather than just application use.

OSers participate in discussions, bug reports, patches, documentation, and testing, including activities such as dual-booting, installing lightweight or experimental distributions, compiling kernels, benchmarking, and exploring security features. They may contribute to open-source projects or vendor-provided OS projects, and frequently consult and contribute to knowledge resources like manuals, wikis, and forums.

While OSers span commercial and open-source ecosystems, the label is not a formal association and has no standardized membership criteria. It overlaps with related communities such as Linux users, BSD enthusiasts, and Windows/macOS power users, and can emphasize ethos of hands-on learning, reproducible testing, and curiosity about OS design. Because OS terminology can be context-dependent, the meaning of OSer can vary between communities.