Most books and courses introduce Linux through shell commands, leaving the kernel as a mysterious black box doing magic behind the scenes. In this post, we will run some experiments to demystify it: the Linux kernel is just a binary that you can build and run.
  • GlowHuddy@lemmy.world
    4·
    21 hours ago

    Well, the kernel is not “just a program” in that it is not like the other programs on your system. If it was, you would “just” run it in your shell. The kernel cannot run this way of course because it is not a user mode program.

    Actually…

    • LeFantome@programming.dev
      2·
      2 hours ago

      Point taken but….

      UML requires:

      1 - extensive support from the host kernel above and beyond what is required to execute for regular programs

      2 - the guest kernel to be specially compiled to be a UML guest

      In other words, even though UML allows a guest Linux kernel to execute as a process on a host Linux kernel, that Linux kernel is not “just a program” like every other user mode application is.