the.com/kernel
the tiny ruler that decides which program gets to touch the actual hardware
means The central, essential core of something — literally a seed or grain inside a shell, and figuratively the innermost part that everything else is built around (including the core of an operating system that controls hardware access).
from From Old English 'cyrnel,' a diminutive of 'corn' meaning 'seed' or 'grain' — so a kernel is literally a 'little corn,' the small hard heart hiding inside a nut or fruit. That same Germanic root for grain gives us 'corn' itself and is a distant cousin of Latin 'granum.' The computing sense is much younger, borrowing the old image of the vital seed within the husk and applying it to the small core program nestled at the center of a system.
- origin
- Linux kernel started as a 1991 hobby project
- size
- Linux kernel now exceeds 30 million lines
- panic
- a fatal kernel error is literally called panic
- etymology
- named for the seed-like core inside a shell
- ring zero
- runs at the most privileged CPU level
popcorn kernel — corn seed that expands when heated to 356°f, creating popcorn
linux kernel — core of the linux operating system, first released by linus torvalds in 1991
kernel panic — operating system error state on unix/linux systems that forces a shutdown