Linux Kernel is the essential part of Linux, responsible for resource allocation, low-level hardware interfaces, security, simple communications, and basic file system management.
Linux is a clone of the operating system Unix, written from scratch by Linus Torvalds with assistance from a loosely-knit team of hackers across the Net. It aims towards POSIX and Single UNIX Specification compliance.
It has all the features you would expect in a modern fully-fledged Unix, including true multitasking, virtual memory, shared libraries, demand loading, shared copy-on-write executables, proper memory management, and multistack networking including IPv4 and IPv6.
Although originally developed first for 32-bit x86-based PCs (386 or higher), today Linux also runs on (at least) the Compaq Alpha AXP, Sun SPARC and UltraSPARC, Motorola 68000, PowerPC, PowerPC64, ARM, Hitachi SuperH, IBM S/390, MIPS, HP PA-RISC, Intel IA-64, DEC VAX, AMD x86-64, AXIS CRIS, and Renesas M32R architectures.
Linux is easily portable to most general-purpose 32- or 64-bit architectures as long as they have a paged memory management unit (PMMU) and a port of the GNU C compiler (gcc) (part of The GNU Compiler Suite, GCC). Linux has also been ported to a number of architectures without a PMMU, although functionality is then obviously somewhat limited. See the Clinux project for more info.
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· So the subject says it all. It's been two weeks(+a day), and 3.3-rc1 is now out.
· There are a couple of trees I haven't merged on purpose, and there may
· be a few trees I overlooked by mistake. The "on purpose" ones were
· things that looked unfamiliar and I felt I didn't have the bandwidth
· to check. The "mistake" ones would just be things I missed due to
· being busy.
· And it really was a pretty busy merge window. I don't know *why* it
· felt so busy, though. In pure numbers, the merge window seems to have
· been pretty normal - the number of merges and regular commits are
· right where you'd expect them. Part of it was spending what felt like
· (and I think was) a couple of days chasing down two independent
· suspend/resume regressions on my laptop, part of it was a couple of
· just bad pull requests, and some of it was some of the independent
· discussions that were on-going. But none of that is unheard of, so
· what do I know..
· Anyway, it's out now, and I'm taking off early for a weekend of beer,
· skiing and poker (not necessarily in that order: "don't drink and
· ski"). No email.
· So if you felt that your pull request was overlooked by mistake (or
· intentionally, but really not so scary that you think I should have a
· really easy time checking it), you have a couple of days to marshal
· your arguments for why I should pull it after all.
· And if you didn't send your pull request in time: "Phhhthrthtpt!". No
· arguments for that one.
· (Stats for those that like them: 20% arch updates (arm, power, mips,
· x86), 60% drivers (networking - wireless in particular, staging,
· media, dri, sound, misc - including getting rid of 'struct sysdev'),
· and 20% random stuff: filesystems, networking, perf etc)
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