What's The Kernel?

since not many people here knows what the kernel is.. and to keep Contrasura's heart beat rate down from now on, here is some explanation of what the hell is the kernel

The Linux kernel presents a virtual machine interface to user processes. Processes are written without needing any knowledge of what physical hardware is installed on a computer -- the Linux kernel abstracts all hardware into a consistent virtual interface. In addition, Linux supports multi-tasking in a manner that is transparent to user processes: each process can act as though it is the only process on the computer, with exclusive use of main memory and other hardware resources. The kernel actually runs several processes concurrently, and is responsible for mediating access to hardware resources so that each process has fair access while inter-process security is maintained.

Plain english, the kernel is the base that all applications use to communicate with the hardware, the X system is an application, the shell is an application, everything above kernel level is in one way or another an application that uses the kernel.

In the Windows world the kernel is called HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer)

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Didn't you post a 3D graph of the kernel some time ago? That was cool. Do you still have the link? Maybe that wasn't you, I dont know. :confused:

PS. There was already a thread on what the kernel is, but aparantly, im not good at explaining things. <_<

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