SysAdmin Weekly
063 - What Is a Kernel, and Why Does It Blue Screen Your Server?
1:04:09
The kernel is just software. It happens to be the one program on the box with no guardrails, which is why one bad driver takes the whole system down with it.
Andy Syrewicze and Eric Siron walk the kernel from the bottom up: why running two programs at once needed a supervisor, how user mode and kernel mode split the work, and where IRQs, drivers, and the HAL fit. Andy strips a Gentoo kernel so…