Chapter 13. LINUX BOOT TIME PROGRAMS

In chapter 12, we discussed the main differences between the environment provided to user programs which run under Linux and the environment under which DOS programs run. We saw how very different these two environments are. Much of the difference between these two environments is due to the fact that a different operating system is running in each. But there is also a difference at the hardware level. DOS was written for the 8086 processor. In order for DOS to run on a machine, that machine must act like an 8086. Linux is a multitasking system. In order for it to run on a machine, that machine must have hardware support for the protection of one task from another. The x86 processors, from the 80386 on, support ...

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