![]() This may now be under threat from Microsoft’s projected adoption of UEFI (United Extensible Firmware Interface) which would replace the existing BIOS in machines built with it. Linux was not originally developed to be portable but has now been ported to a number of hand-held devices, such as the iPhone and iPod, and a modified kernel is being used in the OS for Google Android and Nokia Maemo devices. However, one distinct and unexpected result of these contributions has been its portability. Through time, thanks largely to the contributions made by developers, the Linux kernel has become extremely stable, and efficient in CPU and memory usage. One of the advantages of a monolithic kernel such as this is that if the root file system aborts, the service is easy to get started again because the kernel is still running. In Linux, modules can be dynamically loaded and unloaded in kernel space at runtime to reduce the amount of code running in the kernel to a minimum. The term ‘services’ includes device drivers, system memory, scheduler, memory management, the file system, and the virtual file system (VFS). In the latter, the basic services run outside the kernel, in the userspace. The heated debate of the time was between the respective benefits of the Unix monolithic kernel and the microkernel architecture used in Andrew Tanenbaum’s MINIX. This means basically that modules can be loaded and unloaded while the system is running, but that the modules and the system services are run in the same space as the core functionality. So what is the Linux kernel and why is it so special and successful? It is what is known as a monolithic kernel that has been compiled to be modular. Version 0.11 was released in December 1991, and the Linux kernel and the operating system built around it grew rapidly from then on. Linux attracted many of the people who had contributed to this. The free GNU Project was created in 1983 to develop a free operating system, and although many components had been developed, it failed because its kernel was never completed. It is a development by Linus Torvalds, a Finnish computer student who liked playing around with computers and what makes them tick, and who came up with a new operating system in 1991, designed around a framework or kernel that he called Linux.īecause it was issued as open-source software, it grew rapidly into a workable operating system as literally thousands of developers and coders offered contributions to its development. It has been released under the GNU General Public License, meaning it is free for anybody to use and distribute. The Linux kernel is used by the Unix-like operating systems belonging to the Linux family. ![]()
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