Ok, I didn't know quite where to put this post, so it's just at the end. Just one more argument for the 'OS' being the kernel that I haven't seen mentioned. If you take a FreeBSD system, and you put all the GNU libc and glibc libraries in it, the kernel, which is linux, will be able to run them and any program that uses them. Everything goes through the kernel when run on a computer, and any 'set' of programs (executable and necessary libraries) and any distribution will run on any linux kernel, becuase that is the OS, that is what communicates with the computer. Once you change the kernel, then and only then do you need an emulation layer. You have a perfectly usable computer with only the kernel, you just don't have anything that uses it. You could write an init that will print out 'hello world' and halt. The 'Hello world' program wasn't necesarry for the kernel to run, the kernel could run any other program just the same. This, to me, is the technical definition of OS, but as we can see, it's not the popular definition.
-- Von Fugal
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