[lug] Real Operating Systems

[Peter Hutnick]

John E. Koontz said:
> A few questions ...  as we all know, real operating systems have
> kernels.  Does Windows (an operating system with a well-know GUI shell
> and  Web browser that claims to be a monolithic computer controlling,
> web-accessing piece of software)  have as recognizable kernel?   Does
> this  kernel-oid thing have a name and version numbers, etc.?

All of this is from (stale) memory, so check my "facts."

DOS has a kernel, msdos.sys and a separate I/O subsystem io.sys (?).

The version numbers are just the DOS version, since they only did very
limited releases.  I'm sure MS has some internal version numbers, and
there may be a reasonable way to get to them, but I don't know/recall.

NT is something like ntkrnl.sys.

> What about the GUI shell-oid?   Does it have a name and version numbers
> different from the putative kernel?   Has anyone managed to substitute a
>  different shell for use with the kernel?

The DOS shell (not to be confused with dosshell) is command.com.

"Shell" gets to be a VERY confusing term.  There is the "shell" (roughly
parallel, but nowhere near equivalent to bash), command.com (cmd.something
on NT).  Then there is dosshell, which was a text mode shell, vaguely like
midnight commander.  Then there is the Win3.x/9x GUI shell.  IIRC that is
win.com (but the vast majority of it is broken out into DLLs).  Finally,
there is the NT GUI.  It is totally non-optional, so I don't know much
about it.

The last two sort of use explorer.exe as their "shell."  What is that,
like, nine distinct applications of the word shell?  Anyway, there were
some total replacements around '98.  I lost interest around that time.

> In regard to the GUI, does it have a distinct desktop manager?  If so,
> what  is that called, and does it have its own version numbers?

Who knows?  I'm not a windows developer, but as I understand it it is all
a big black box with a bunch of (often competing) APIs.

I imagine that these key bins have some sort of embedded version numbers. 
NT coughs up the "build number" at the bootloader screen.  DLLs have a
very structured (and publicly documented) versioning system.

Hope this helps.

-Peter