this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Indeed, gaps are present in my knowledge. I understand what you wrote, in theory, but vaguely based on my reading from a forum on kernel architectures several years ago. I'm most familiar with the user experience of configuring a custom Linux kernel with Gentoo versus needing a WiFi driver that I need WiFi access to source.
Since you are touching on a gap in my knowledge, perhaps a more recent issue and curiosity will help me ground this a little better if you do not mind responding. What is the deal with secure boot and Windows drivers? How are they able to run some random driver from the internet that has DMA?
Secureboot and DMA are two different and AFAIK unrelated things. Secureboot primarily exists to ensure that only trusted OS kernels are run on a particular device. Otherwise someone could just boot their own OS installation from wherever and then have it access your storage and other devices and thus compromise your machine. I am not entirely sure how it works but I think it uses cryptographic signatures for kernels and drivers that aren't built into a kernel. I know that on Linux with Secureboot on if you want to use certain dynamically loaded drivers then they have to be signed. I prefer not to deal with all that so I just disable it in the firmware because no cyber criminal has physical access to my PC anyway.
DMA is just a way to get data from peripherals without CPU intervention. Without DMA every time a peripheral wanted to send your machine data it would have to trigger an interrupt (or be polled continuously) which the OS would catch and then read the data from the device. This isn't really super practical with modern hardware hence DMA allows peripheral devices to write directly to the system's main memory without the CPU (or the OS that runs on it) being involved at all. Then the kernel can read that data from memory whenever it sees fit to do so.