Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 9 Mar 1996 11:25:41 -0500 (EST) | From | Harvey Fishman <> | Subject | Re: Linux isn't an operating system |
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On 8 Mar 1996, Jurgen Botz wrote:
> Well, most people I've talked to think otherwise. First of all Linux > is not Unix (just like GNU's not Unix ;-) and most certainly not > UNIX(tm), and secondly in Unix and Unix-like OSes the kernel is not > the OS, it's the kernel. The very word "kernel" implies that > distinction! If the kernel is the kernel of the OS, then how can it > also be the whole OS?
Because the term "kernel' is not really a Unixism at all. Most modern operating systems are layered into at least three separable parts - the kernel, the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS), and the device drivers. For instance, that is the intent of the four security rings in the Intel hardware model. Each layer of the O/S operates in its own ring with increasing privilege and the kernel being the most trusted with the greatest privilege. Application software operates in the outermost ring.
But Unix has never emerged from the primordial ooze, and remains just an amorphous blob. If you try to apply modern terms to the dinosaur, you have the kernel refer to the entire O/S as there is nothing else.
I first learned about operating systems in probably the same time frame as Richard - mid '50s - and then the 'system' referred to the idea of a planned way of carrying out the tasks rather than to a collection of objects. Indeed, the operating system was the design rather than the code to execute it.
Harvey
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Harvey Fishman | fishman@panix.com | Sum, ergo cogito. 718-258-7276 |
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