Marko Vojinovic wrote:
On Sunday 27 July 2008 03:40, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
On Jul 26, 2008, Marko Vojinovic <vvmarko@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
But the system without a kernel has *precisely zero* usability.
Yet you provided and cited the counter-example yourself: the boot
loader required to load the kernel, and that actually provides some
usability, including the ability to load a fully-functional program
such as memtest86+, that runs without a kernel and is also included in
the distribution. You could get many other useful programs that run
in "real mode" started from grub.
I don't understand what you mean by "real mode". Memtest runs under the bios
operating system. The fact that it is a part of a distro and being invoked by
grub is just a matter of convenience. No program runs without some sort of
kernel, except the kernel itself.
...
Also for grub itself. It is an application that runs under bios.
There is no magic in Linux that distinguishes it from GRUB. Both are
"applications" that run in real mode.
Real mode is an operating mode for general purpose processors wherein an
application has full access to interrupts, hardware IO, memory, etc.
Most kernels run applications in protected mode, where they do not have
direct access to hardware.
That's the only thing that really separates the kernel from other
processes. It runs in real mode. So does Memtest86+. And GRUB. And
Xen. They're all just processes. Your belief that the kernel is a
magical element of an operating system stems from the fact that you
don't understand what real mode is, or how processors work. That's OK,
most people never will. They don't have any reason to. But since you
don't understand that, please believe us when we tell you that GRUB,
Memtest86+, Xen, and Linux are all applications that run in real mode.
A kernel is not required in order to run a real-mode application, which
makes Alexandre's comparison fair. The system has *some* functionality
without or before Linux runs, since users can interact with real-mode
applications. (They can actually do more with those real mode
applications than they could with Linux and no GNU)
It's main
purpose is to load some other, more sophisticated kernel, that, once running,
eliminates the need for both bios and grub. So you cannot exactely consider
grub to be a part that defines an os.
Well, the kernel's purpose is to load other, more sophisticated
applications. Again, there's no magic in the Linux kernel. It's just a
program, like all of the others.
I agree that grub is as essential as the Linux kernel according to my
measuring stick (that is why I mentioned it in the first place), but it is
eliminated from the contest on other grounds. And I hope we all agree that
giving the name to a distro based on the bootloader is plain silly.
No more than naming an operating system after its kernel. I'm not aware
of any other operating system which is referred to by a name which is
clearly the name of its kernel and nothing else.
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