Most books and courses introduce Linux through shell commands, leaving the kernel as a mysterious black box doing magic behind the scenes. In this post, we will run some experiments to demystify it: the Linux kernel is just a binary that you can build and run.
  • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
    33·
    6 hours ago

    It’s a program certainly, but “just a program” is a bit misleading because it places it on the same footing as Doom or cat or an Arduino project. Linux is a ring 0 program, which processors give unique treatment.

  • lemmyseizethemeans@lemmygrad.ml
    3·
    5 hours ago

    Thanks op this is a great article. Having compiled kernels since 2.4 or thenabouts, it’s a great topic and I never really thought of it as just another program. Neat stuff!

  • dubyakay@lemmy.ca
    3·
    6 hours ago

    On my arch install, all I have is vmlinuz-linux under /boot. How come there’s no further information appended like in the article?

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      6 hours ago

      Different distros vary a bit here, and it will differ if you’re on a system using efi.

      Sometimes /boot isn’t mounted by default (it’s not needed unless you’re updating a kernel). You may be seeing a symlink or placeholder there.

      If you’re using efi there will probably be /boot/EFI or something where your kernel is stored.