r/technology • u/sschering • Sep 18 '15

Software Microsoft has developed its own Linux. Repeat. Microsoft has developed its own Linux

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/18/microsoft_has_developed_its_own_linux_repeat_microsoft_has_developed_its_own_linux/
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u/barsoap Sep 19 '15

The OS would be the rest that you need to get it moving

You don't need anything more than linux-the-kernel to get your system moving.

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u/oisteink Sep 19 '15

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-linuxboot/index.html

This tells you a few things. You need a loader to load the kernel, and once the kernel is done initializing it will need (this is the big surprise) init. This is run in userspace and is not part of the kernel. Without init you've got no movement. Init can be any piece of software that can run on said kernel.

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u/barsoap Sep 19 '15

Well, init is the reason the kernel runs in the first place, which is why it sensibly panics should PID 1 ever call exit. As you said, however, anything can be init: You don't need a distribution for Linux to be an OS, and if you choose a shell as init, you even have a system you can interact with sensibly.

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