On Thursday 24 July 2008 20:11, Alexandre Oliva wrote: > On Jul 24, 2008, Marko Vojinovic <vvmarko@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Under the hood there is the Linux engine, > > > > But tell me, what is in principle The Single Most Important element > > of the car? There is only one answer --- the engine. > > So, what remains to be justified is why you decided Linux is the > engine rather than say one of the tires. You present no evidence > whatsoever to support this decision, and it seems entirely arbitrary, > bordering circular logic. IOW, you arbitrarily chose the elements in > the analogy, without any backing whatsoever, in such a way that they > would support the conclusion you wanted to arrive at. That's called a > false analogy. It's caused by circular reasoning. Unless you have > reasons to support the parallel, that is. Please share. Ok, well... :-) As far as I know, the purpose of a kernel is to abstract the hardware layer from the userspace software (this is of course an oversimplification, but I believe it is sufficient for making the parallel). In other words, userspace program communicates to the kernel, and the kernel "does the essential work" (actually, it communicates further to the hardware that does the actual work, but that is abstracted out). The parallel is simple --- the car engine is also the one "doing the essential work" (converting fuel to mechanical --- ie. usable --- energy). But just to make sure that you do not misinterpret the above parallel, let me elaborate a bit on the importance of the kernel itself. Consider a simple situation --- take a Fedora distro, and remove all GNU utilities. The system will lose much of its functionality, but not all. Some hypothetical userspace program could still be able to communicate to the kernel and do some useful work. However minimal, *some* functionality still remains (at least I expect it to). Next take a Fedora distro, and remove the kernel. The system becomes completely unusable. Its functionality is *strictly equal* to zero. No userspace program can work. This means that the kernel is qualitatively more essential piece of the os than the GNU utilities. The same is with the car engine --- given a car, remove the transmission, clutch, wheels, whatever. The car is broken, but you can still turn the engine on and convert fuel to mechanical energy, ie. do some work that can in principle be used (for example, to feed the alternator to produce electric current for the Amarok radio receiver). But then take the car and remove the engine --- the whole car becomes completely useless, you have no way of converting fuel to anything useful. Thus, the engine is conceptually more important than any other part of the car. That is the motive for the parallel between the kernel and the engine --- level of essentiallity and purpose of both are the same. Without the engine, the car loses its *meaning*, its purpose is undefined, while without any other part it is broken, but still makes sense. Without the kernel, the distro loses its *meaning*, ceases to exist, while without any other part it is broken, but still makes sense. That is why I consider the kernel to be more important than other pieces of an os or a distro in general. Best, :-) Marko -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
