On Mon, Sep 02, 2002 at 01:16:10AM -0700, Seth Arnold wrote: > > Another reason for asking this question is my > > friend told the desktop in windows95 is implemented in > > the kernel space. > > It is difficult to draw the line between userspace and kernel space in > windows; it is my understanding that "the graphical interface" in > windows is handled in the kernel; however, explorer, the process which > handles the startmenu, window decorations, etc, is most definately a > user process, so it is incorrect to say "the desktop" is implemented in > the kernel -- but where exactly the line is drawn, I don't know. > > It would be easier to know if the source code was available for reading. :) AFAIK, Winows _95_ are DOS. They run on top of dos and have cooperative multitasking (enforced by the event querying function, but if you write a long loop that does not touch the display, they just freeze). So "kernel" means interrupt handlers. When you start an endless loop in Win95 and press Ctrl-Alt-Del, they do nothing. You press it again and a message comes out: Sytem is busy waiting for the close application dialog to appear. So the dialog seems to be a "user-mode" process. AFAIK Windows NT and 2000 are both microkernel, but rumors say, that it's hybrid microkernel that includes graphic primitives and some other stuff that don't belong even in monolitic kernel, because otherways it would be way too slow. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jan 'Bulb' Hudec <bulb@ucw.cz> -- Kernelnewbies: Help each other learn about the Linux kernel. Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/ FAQ: http://kernelnewbies.org/faq/
