Anatomy of the Linux Kernel 104
LinucksGirl writes "The Linux kernel is the core of a large and complex operating system, and while it's huge, it is well organized in terms of subsystems and layers. In this article, the reader explores the general structure of the Linux kernel and gets to know its major subsystems and core interfaces. 'When discussing architecture of a large and complex system, you can view the system from many perspectives. One goal of an architectural decomposition is to provide a way to better understand the source, and that's what we'll do here. The Linux kernel implements a number of important architectural attributes. At a high level, and at lower levels, the kernel is layered into a number of distinct subsystems. Linux can also be considered monolithic because it lumps all of the basic services into the kernel. This differs from a microkernel architecture where the kernel provides basic services such as communication, I/O, and memory and process management, and more specific services are plugged in to the microkernel layer.'"
Re:Good article... (Score:5, Informative)
Not that there's anything wrong with Linux From Scratch, but a deep diving kernel expedition it isn't.
Something remotely related (Score:4, Informative)
Interesting to read about events from a bygone era.
Re:Protected from Commercial Exploitation? (Score:4, Informative)
wrong! (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, the diagram gets it right, but the text is essentially correct (unless you insist on being overly pendantic). glibc provides a portable system call interface via functions such as read(), write(), and open(). These functions provide the mechanism to transition between the user-space application and the kernel, ie, they invoke sysenter and sysexit (or int 0x80) on x86 cpus.
Unless you're so l33t that you invoke all your system calls with inline assembly?
A Brief History of Kernel Size (Score:5, Informative)
Hush little kernel, nobody said you are getting a little f-a-t!
Re:A Brief History of Kernel Size (Score:2, Informative)
Re:2.6.x.x (Score:1, Informative)
Re:A Brief History of Kernel Size (Score:3, Informative)
I think you've been adding a lot of features without knowing it.