OSDev.org

I am writing an OS that (I hope) will eventually become an emergancy rescue disk (similar to Windows 98 boot disk, but with a proper GUI and more (useful) utilities). My question is weather to use a Macro Kernel with everything (including utilities like a terminal emulator and file browser) included, a modular Kernel which loads all the utilities as though they were drivers whilst loading or a Micro Kernel which has the utilities all as seperate programs? ??? The latter two obviously have the advantage that they do not need the kernel re-compiling for every new driver/program but I think that the former will be easier to code (no need to load programs from disk to memory or execute seperate programs etc...). :-\

Imho, if you don't have the ability to load user programs, then you're not a kernel ... just an application that runs with kernel priviledges ...

Now maybe that's what you want to do

My ADSL modem runs VxWorks. It doesn't need to run any user applications, yet the VxWorks core is undeniably a full OS kernel. Where can you draw the line?