Getting people into Linux

[Mike McCarty]

Tim wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-01-04 at 08:06 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:
> 
>>You should only need a new kernel when you get new hardware that
>>the old one doesn't handle.
> 
> 
> Not even then...  You should really only need a new kernel when it
> offers better features than the last.  Drivers and handlers ought to be
> separate than the operating system, they're peripherals.

Umm, no. Some things which change and need management are *not*
peripherals. For example, if the memory management unit on your
machine changes to use a different page size, then your kernel
needs to know that. It may be buried in a HAL or similar, but
still kernel level code needs to change. For multi-processor
systems, some sort of spin-lock needs to be implemented in
kernel level code for communication between the two CPUs.
Again, such code can be isolated in a HAL or similar, but this
is still kernel level.

Mike
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