What does Webmin do?

Webmin, based on Perl, is a web-based interface for your system administration needs and runs as its own process and web server. It is tailored to run on Unix/Linux systems.

Webmin is checking for server requests from the internet or local network in the background of your server processes. With that tool you do have access to system critical components which only administrative users of the server should have and not regular users (for them, there is a different tool called "Usermin" available which is covered separately).

How does Webmin help and how does it compare?

For using/loggin into Webmin, you need a relatively modern web browser. You can setup user accounts, Apache, DNS, Tomcat, PHP, MySQL, file sharing and much more. It removes the need to manually edit configuration files and lets you manage a system from the console or even remotely. Webmin supports the concept of modules.

Putting Webmin in perspective to Virtualmin: Webmin does work on a server system level, while Virtualmin creates virtual private servers (VPS) alongside as a control panel only for web hosting purposes. Virtualmin is therefore a module of Webmin that needs the latter one to be installed.