Introduction to LINUX Operating System

Linux is one of popular version of UNIX operating System. It is open source as its source code is
freely available. It is free to use. Linux was designed considering UNIX compatibility. Its
functionality list is quite similar to that of UNIX.

Linux is an open-source Unix-like operating system-based family on the Linux kernel, and the
OS kernel was first published on 17 September 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Typically, Linux is
packaged as the Linux distribution, which contains the supporting libraries and system software
and kernel, several of which are offered by the GNU Project. Several Linux distributions use the
term "Linux" in the title, but the Free Software Foundation uses the "GNU/Linux" title to focus
on the necessity of GNU software, causing a few controversie

Components of Linux System

Linux Operating System has primarily three components

 Kernel − Kernel is the core part of Linux. It is responsible for all major activities of this
operating system. It consists of various modules and it interacts directly with the
underlying hardware. Kernel provides the required abstraction to hide low level
hardware details to system or application programs.

 System Library − System libraries are special functions or programs using which
application programs or system utilities accesses Kernel's features. These libraries
implement most of the functionalities of the operating system and do not requires kernel
module's code access rights.

 System Utility − System Utility programs are responsible to do specialized, individual

level tasks.
Kernel Mode vs User Mode
Kernel component code executes in a special privileged mode called kernel mode with full
access to all resources of the computer. This code represents a single process, executes in single
address space and do not require any context switch and hence is very efficient and fast. Kernel
runs each processes and provides system services to processes, provides protected access to
hardware to processes.

Support code which is not required to run in kernel mode is in System Library. User programs
and other system programs works in User Mode which has no access to system hardware and
kernel code. User programs/ utilities use System libraries to access Kernel functions to get
system's low level tasks.

Basic Features
Following are some of the important features of Linux Operating System.

 Portable − Portability means software can works on different types of hardware in same
way. Linux kernel and application programs supports their installation on any kind of
hardware platform.

 Open Source − Linux source code is freely available and it is community based
development project. Multiple teams work in collaboration to enhance the capability of
Linux operating system and it is continuously evolving.

 Multi-User − Linux is a multiuser system means multiple users can access system
resources like memory/ ram/ application programs at same time.
  Multiprogramming − Linux is a multiprogramming system means multiple applications
can run at same time.

 Hierarchical File System − Linux provides a standard file structure in which system
files/ user files are arranged.

 Shell − Linux provides a special interpreter program which can be used to execute
commands of the operating system. It can be used to do various types of operations, call
application programs. etc.

 Security − Linux provides user security using authentication features like password
protection/ controlled access to specific files/ encryption of data.

Architecture
The following illustration shows the architecture of a Linux system −

The architecture of a Linux System consists of the following layers −

 Hardware layer − Hardware consists of all peripheral devices (RAM/ HDD/ CPU etc).

 Kernel − It is the core component of Operating System, interacts directly with hardware,
provides low level services to upper layer components.
  Shell − An interface to kernel, hiding complexity of kernel's functions from users. The
shell takes commands from the user and executes kernel's functions.

 Utilities − Utility programs that provide the user most of the functionalities of an
operating systems.

Kernel

Definition - What does Kernel mean?

A kernel is the core component of an operating system. Using interprocess communication and
system calls, it acts as a bridge between applications and the data processing performed at the
hardware level.

When an operating system is loaded into memory, the kernel loads first and remains in memory
until the operating system is shut down again. The kernel is responsible for low-level tasks such
as disk management, task management and memory management.

Techopedia explains Kernel

A computer kernel interfaces between the three major computer hardware components, providing
services between the application/user interface and the CPU, memory and other hardware I/O
devices.

The kernel provides and manages computer resources, allowing other programs to run and use
these resources. The kernel also sets up memory address space for applications, loads files with
application code into memory, sets up the execution stack for programs and branches out to
particular locations inside programs for execution.

The kernel is responsible for:

 Process management for application execution

 Memory management, allocation and I/O
 Device management through the use of device drivers
 System call control, which is essential for the execution of kernel services

There are five types of kernels:

1. Monolithic Kernels: All operating system services run along the main kernel thread in a
monolithic kernel, which also resides in the same memory area, thereby providing
powerful and rich hardware access.
2. Microkernels: Define a simple abstraction over hardware that use primitives or system
calls to implement minimum OS services such as multitasking, memory management and
interprocess communication.
3. Hybrid Kernels: Run a few services in the kernel space to reduce the performance
overhead of traditional microkernels where the kernel code is still run as a server in the
user space.
4. Nano Kernels: Simplify the memory requirement by delegating services, including the
basic ones like interrupt controllers or timers to device drivers.
5. Exo Kernels: Allocate physical hardware resources such as processor time and disk block
to other programs, which can link to library operating systems that use the kernel to
simulate operating system abstractions.