Linux 3.0 Will Be Faster Than 2.6.39 179
sfcrazy writes "While we were thinking that the announcement of 3.x branch was nothing more than Linus' mood swing, it seems there is more to it. Linus wrote on the Linux Kernel Mailing List, '3.0 will still be noticeably faster than 2.6.39 due to the other changes made (ie the read-ahead), so yes, the regression itself is fixed.'"
Re:Faster? (Score:5, Interesting)
"I will add that I've used many operating systems over the years, and the 'OS' has always referred to the complete package"
I wouldn't dare to suggest that computer science and not user perception is the best place to define an operating system.
Feel free to peruse this gem http://www.amazon.com/Operating-Systems-Design-Implementation-Second/dp/0136386776 [amazon.com] . It is computer science coursework that explains how to write an operating system... err kernel as you say.
As it happens, the MINIX operating system... err kernel, was used as the basis for the book. Once upon a time, Linus Torvalds set out to write an operating system and used this material as reference.
The same author wrote another book, "A History of Operating Systems". You need the history to understand. In the early days all computer operators were programmers and the operating system provided an abstraction between manually controlling the individual hardware components with directly input binary. The drivers, boot system, and memory management were clearly part of that abstraction but since programs weren't even stored but were input one off there was no such thing as a userland program being part of the operating system!
Later storage became more common and some operating systems included some additional helpful applications to make writing your programs easier and later yet pre-written programs began to spread. In some cases like the later dos and apple systems the operating system wasn't even available separately so it became common to refer to the entire operating system distribution as an operating system for short. Many less informed (which ultimately was most) users didn't even realize it was a shortened term.