Re: [Sheflug] linux.org

[Alastair Donlon <nospam [at] netsoc.ucd.ie>]

I have to dispute the notion of DOS as an OS. DOS is an example of
a shell + some utilities. It lacks at least one fundamental part of
an OS - a kernel. There's virtually no management of... processes,
memory, disks, i/o ports, network,... In effect, every single
application program had to be its own kernel and do most of the
work itself. Apart from the odd few bits of drivers and TSR's, DOS
had none of the important features of a kernel.

That's where Win95 made a big difference. It may have been built
on top of DOS, but it added the kernel which gives it the functionality
of a _modern_ operating system (modern meaning 80's on).

A.D.

On Wed, Nov 01, 2000 at 08:30:54AM +0000, Craig Andrews wrote:
> Basically, I define an operating system as a kernel (for linking the
> software to the hardware), some kind of shell (graphical or otherwise, for
> linking the user to the software), and of course apps/utilities, enough to
> constitute some kind of file system management, process control, software
> execution, etc. By these terms, good example of a minimal operating system
> is MS-DOS. It boots, it lets you do what you like, and thats it...
> 
> Craig Andrews
> craig [at] fishbot.org.uk
> 
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> Life would be so much easier if we 
> could just look at the source code.
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> 
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