Anatomy of the Linux Kernel

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.'"

Comments

Re:2.6.x.x

[Drinking Bleach]

Is that how it works these days? No wonder there's been no 2.7/2.8/etc yet.

I stopped using Linux when it was about... 2.6.11 or something. (Moved to OpenBSD and never looked back)

Nitpicks

[jd]

Kernels are not Operating Systems and it is syntactically incorrect to place a "," before an "and", although it is usually acceptable where one list contains a second list. In this case, where the "and" applies to the whole of the remainder of the sentence and not just the insert, the comma should follow the and.