Freebsd vs. linux

[Eric Kjeldergaard]

On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 01:43:37 +0100, Anthony Atkielski
<atkielski.anthony at wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> Eric Kjeldergaard writes:
> 
> > Well, no that's not entirely true...First off, there's the claim by
> > Windows itself that it's not drivers.
> 
> The OS itself never identifies problems as being within the drivers.
> Driver code is assimilated with the kernel while it is running.

Well, that's simply not true.  Windows (At least XP, can't remember if
this happens on 2k or not) definitely states that the error that
caused the crash is or is not a driver.  It says something to the
effect of "The system crash was caused by a bad driver."  You read the
code, I'm sure you know where that message gets generated.  As windows
is largely infallible, I'm sure they have some way of keeping straight
which portion of the kernelspace is drivers and which isn't.

> > And then there's the thing where since one is including drivers along
> > with an operating system, they are part of the operating system even
> > if they were written by a third party.
> 
> They are not part of the operating system.

Yeah, they kinda are.  If they are on the operating system cd, they
are part of the operating system.  An operating system is just a
software package.  In BSD, for example, this includes things like ls
and dd.  In windows, it includes things like iexplore and services.

-- 
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