More ?s

[ltkenbo]

I have 2 questions.

What are kernels? I've always wondered that. And how do they work?

I installed knoppix along with windows on my machine and I was wondering why doesn't it let you change any files other than the home ones. Like system files or windows files or any other files than the ones in file:/home/knoppix? How do I get arround this? Like how can I just always have root privalages, like just when browsing arround?

[krohnjw]

The kernel is the backbone of your operating system, it does all of the actual interfacing with your hardware.

You can't access files outside of home for one simple reason, security. File permissions are structured so that any user can write (read: delete) only files that belong to that user, and can only read files that they are allowed to read. Linux is by nature a multi user system, and as a result, it is configured to allow only one user, root (the administrator) access to configuration files and everything else not found in /home. A user cannot access files that are not explicity his or does not allow him to read it by default.

To get around this you su to root, you should have read access on almost every file you will need to access, if you need to edit it, su to root. If you really want to get around it, you can just log in as root, as dangerous as that is, if that is what you want, you can try adding yourself to the root group, bit I wouldn't reccomend either of these.

You will get used to what is necessary and what you need to use root for, other than that it isn't smart to run as root. Let me give you an example. Say you somehow get some malicious code and execute something that causes a buffer overflow and begins executing code. If you are root, it can now trash everything. If you are your user, nothing outside of /home/user can be touched (assuming you didn't need elevated priviledges or the program itself doesnt run with elevated priviledges.

[ltkenbo]

Ah I see, so that is why linux has like a way less chance of crashing compared to windows.

[dchw_dude]

Windows has a kernel too. Mosy OSes have them. It's just that windows has a different sturcture than linux in the kernel