Kernel Glossary

Browse 13 kernel terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

13 Kernel Terms

BPF Security
Security monitoring, enforcement, or isolation techniques built on Berkeley Packet Filter or extended BPF capabilities in the kernel. BPF security is powerful...
Kernel Module
A piece of code that can be dynamically loaded into or unloaded from a running operating system kernel, extending its functionality without requiring a reboot...
Linux
Linux is an open-source, Unix-like operating system kernel created by Linus Torvalds in 1991. Combined with the GNU userland and other software, it forms...
Linux Kernel Community
The global community of maintainers, contributors, reviewers, companies, and users involved in the Linux kernel. In open-source culture, the Linux kernel...
Linux Kernel Module
A loadable piece of code that can extend Linux kernel functionality without requiring a full kernel rebuild for every change. In systems culture, kernel...
Loadable Module
A compiled code unit that can be loaded into a running system without restarting it — most commonly a Linux kernel module (.ko file) that adds device drivers,...
Microkernel
An OS kernel architecture that minimizes the code running in kernel space to essential primitives — IPC, scheduling, and memory management — and runs drivers,...
Spin Lock
A low-level mutual exclusion primitive where a thread repeatedly checks (spins on) an atomic flag in a tight loop rather than yielding the CPU to the...
Swappiness
A Linux kernel parameter (vm.swappiness) ranging from 0 to 200 that controls how aggressively the kernel moves inactive memory pages from RAM to swap space on...
System Call
The interface between a user-space program and the operating system kernel. When a program needs OS services (file I/O, network, process creation, memory...
Udev
The Linux userspace device manager that dynamically creates and removes device nodes in `/dev` in response to kernel events (uevents) when hardware is plugged...
User Space
The memory region and execution privilege level where normal application processes run, isolated from the kernel by the CPU's protection rings. User-space code...
Virtual Address Space
The range of memory addresses available to a process, mapped by the OS and MMU to physical RAM, swap, or memory-mapped files. Each process gets its own virtual...

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