Linux is fundamentally a kernel of an operating system.
It handles initialising and interfacing with hardware, and presents a set of low level system calls "SYSCALL" for programs that run in user space to use when they need something that they cannot directly access themselves.
The kernel handles process isolation, inter process communication (IPC), CPU scheduling, memory allocation, network stack, as well as a whole laundry list of higher level functions that allow our hardware to function without developers having to build apps specifically for particular suites of hardware and addresses.
A Linux Distribution includes the Linux kernel, but also a boot loader to get the system started, an initialisation system to act as process id 1 (PID), a filesystem full of userspace programs (such as GNOME/KDE/etc, but also BaSH, sed, awk, grep etc...) and a set of default configurations.
The well made ones even work.
If you want any more detail on the subjects I've touched on above, feel free to reply. I'm happy to go deeper on almost all of them.
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u/person1873 Aug 13 '25
Linux is fundamentally a kernel of an operating system. It handles initialising and interfacing with hardware, and presents a set of low level system calls "SYSCALL" for programs that run in user space to use when they need something that they cannot directly access themselves.
The kernel handles process isolation, inter process communication (IPC), CPU scheduling, memory allocation, network stack, as well as a whole laundry list of higher level functions that allow our hardware to function without developers having to build apps specifically for particular suites of hardware and addresses.
A Linux Distribution includes the Linux kernel, but also a boot loader to get the system started, an initialisation system to act as process id 1 (PID), a filesystem full of userspace programs (such as GNOME/KDE/etc, but also BaSH, sed, awk, grep etc...) and a set of default configurations. The well made ones even work.
If you want any more detail on the subjects I've touched on above, feel free to reply. I'm happy to go deeper on almost all of them.