[lug] booting and kernel compiling (was dumpdates)

[Kevin King]

>The kernel basically provides a standard software interface to the
>hardware.  For instance, in Unix everything is treated as a file.
If you
>go to /dev for instance you will find your disks listed as /dev/hd?
or
>/dev/sd?.  To read and right to them you really just need to read
and
>write these files, the kernel handles all of the issues of finding
and
>retrieving the appropriate pieces of data on the drives.  The same
thing
>goes for reading the keyboard or writing to the screen etc..  The
>advantage of this kind of abstraction is that if you change the
underlying
>hardware you only need to re-write the kernel to support the
hardware
>rather than every program on the system.
>
>- Wayde
>  (wallen at boulder.nist.gov)

Well stated, Wayde!

--Kevin
kevin at precisonline.com
http://www.precisonline.com
http://www.precisonline.com/gold.htm