At 20:25 30/12/2000, you wrote:
>
>I'd like to know, can somebody put me straight on why we should be
>optimising our kernels? what is a kernel?
>
>David and Alicia
Assuming this is not a wind-up. The kernel is the "guts" of the operating
systems. This is the software that makes the computer come alive and allows
other bits of software called "applications", which we as users interact
with. The kernal software provides functions which allows application
softaware to access hard disks, the internet or draw pictures on your vdu
screen. Since the kernel is doing all this on behalf of all the applictions
that are running on your computer it is a good idea for it to be very
efficient in what it does. Optimisation is a method of building the kernel
through a process called compilation that makes the resulant kernl software
smaller (so it uses less memory) and also runs faster. When one is actually
developing software that will be part of the kernel or work very intimately
with the kernel, one may have a version of kernel which contains software
that will help in debugging and developing these types of software, thus in
that case one will be running a non-optimised kernel.
-- Dev
