>The brain.
>
>
>>what is a kernel?
Ok, I'll make a stab at it.
The kernel is the brain, or heart of an operating system. It makes all of
the low-level decisions on the computer.
As a user, you never see or interact with the kernel. You always use a
program to do that. On the Mac OS, you use the finder to move files. The
finder tells the kernel, the kernel uses a filesystem driver, the driver
tells the hard disk what to do.
To give you an idea of some of the things it handles, this is from a
description of a course on the internals of a UNIX kernel-
...The course will cover basic kernel services, process structure, virtual
and physical memory management, scheduling, paging and swapping. The kernel
I/O structure will be described showing how I/O is multiplexed, special
devices are handled, character processing is done, and the buffer pool is
managed. The implementation of the filesystem and its capabilities will be
described. The filesystem interface will then be generalized to show how to
support multiple filesystem types...
...The networking half of the course will start with an overview of
networking terminology and an introduction to the interprocess
communication interface (sockets)...
Even if you do not have a UNIX system, most OS's have something like a
kernel. On the 'Classic' Mac OS (not OS X), the 'System' file in the System
Folder could be considered the 'kernel'. For MS-DOS it was command.com,
io.sys, and msdos.sys. Since Linux has become popular, there is more
discussion of the 'kernel'. The kernel is the only part of Linux, the rest
of the OS is made of GNU software (plus others), so naturally most talk
about Linux centers on the kernel.
More discussion?
Charles Dostale
System Administrator
Silver Oaks Communications
http://www.silveroaks.com
824 17th Street
Moline IL USA 61265
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
309-797-9898
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