Tweet
Well, the terminologies are misleading different. Windows isn't just an operating system. It's also a graphical environment, a suite of utilities, and a bazillion other things.
Linux is just the kernel. The utilities are GNU, the graphical enironment is X, the graphical controls are QT/GTK/etc, and so on.
But Asher is technically right and Urban Ranger is technically wrong. There are more holes in a Windows installation than in a Linux installation, but there are more holes in the Linux kernel than in the Windows kernel.
An OS has a system space and a user space. The kernel is system space and the applications are user space. Switching between the two incurs overhead, and a lot of things can only be done in system space. So, you can stick humongous hardware drivers into system space and bloat the kernel, or you can keep them in user space and suffer a penalty every time you switch contexts to the slim kernel.
Is it just me or is the above incoherent? Bah, humbug.
Linux is just the kernel. The utilities are GNU, the graphical enironment is X, the graphical controls are QT/GTK/etc, and so on.
But Asher is technically right and Urban Ranger is technically wrong. There are more holes in a Windows installation than in a Linux installation, but there are more holes in the Linux kernel than in the Windows kernel.
An OS has a system space and a user space. The kernel is system space and the applications are user space. Switching between the two incurs overhead, and a lot of things can only be done in system space. So, you can stick humongous hardware drivers into system space and bloat the kernel, or you can keep them in user space and suffer a penalty every time you switch contexts to the slim kernel.
Is it just me or is the above incoherent? Bah, humbug.
Comment