alt Hacker NewsThis is a really clean write up, but it is absolutely a happy path. I do feel the kernel is too big to be called a program. It is almost everything you want from comp sci class, router, scheduler, queue, memory manager. There are some interesting things that you have to handle if you do not run and OS and init on hardware e.g. handle signals, how do you shutdown, reap child process. I believe you are always better off with an init process and an OS.
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> I do feel the kernel is too big to be called a program.
I kind of agree, but the kernel as a program serves a pedagogical framing here.
The goal of the post is to make it more tangible for developers, they write programs that are files on the disk, and you can interact with them. That's where the analogy came from.
yes, it's misleading clickbait.
the author's apparent epiphany is realizing that init is just a program. the kernel is, of course, software as well, but it does injustice to both "program" and "kernel" to lump them together.