Information and Communication Technology

3.4.3 Understanding Linux

Life in any operating system begins and ends with Kernel. It is a program that constitutes the central core of a computer operating system. It has complete control over everything that occurs in the system.

It manages the resources of Linux such as:

• File management
• Multitasking
• Memory management
• I/O management
• Process management
• Device management
• Networking support including IPv4 and IPv6
• Advanced features such as virtual memory, shared libraries, demand loading, shared copy-on-write executable etc .

The kernel decides who will use these resources and for how long and when. It runs your programs or sets up to execute binary files. The kernel acts as an intermediary between the computer hardware and various applications.

A kernel is just opposite to a shell (such as bash, csh or ksh in Unix-like operating systems), which is the outermost part of an operating system and a program that interacts with user commands. The kernel itself does not interact directly with the user, but rather interacts with the shell and other programs as well as with the hardware devices on the system, including the processor (also called the central processing unit or CPU), memory and disk drives