3.1. the Kernel

• Can be monolithic (Linux, BSD) or micro-kernel (OS X/Darwin)
• preemptive multitasking
• takes care of:
  • I/O (disk, terminals, printers, tapes, ...)
  • basic peripheral control (disk, serial, NICs...)
  • memory management (allocation, recovery, Virtual Memory / swap)
  • timesharing / scheduling of processes
  • networking (IP, etc...)

The kernel is always running. It schedules running tasks one at a time (context switching) so that they get an equal share of the CPU time.

Scheduling of processes