What is a kernel - Gary explains 

My mum is a kernel...want to eat some cereal late night..have to go trough the kernel..want to go out with friends..have to go through the kernel..wana get some money..have to go through the kernel

Basically, there's a penguin in your phone

Gary is like the computer science teacher we wished we had...

The kernel is the central module of an operating system (OS). It is the part of the operating system that loads first, and it remains in main memory. Because it stays in memory, it is important for the kernel to be as small as possible while still providing all the essential services required by other parts of the operating system and applications. The kernel code is usually loaded into a protected area of memory to prevent it from being overwritten by programs or other parts of the operating system.

The colonel of kernels. Good explanation.

I want him as my lecturer in my college. Genius Gary.

I don't normally comment but this deserves a 9.5 /10. The detractor being some of the graphic presentations flashed too fast when Gary was speaking and these are invaluable to blended learners. However, this is a very important topic when undertaking the Certified Secure Software Lifecycle Professional Exam. We need more teachers like Gary.

Say kernel again.

Guru Gary, thanks for enlightening me.... _/\_

I really appreciate videos like this. It shows regular joes like me how much effort and thought goes through our devices every day, so we can really appreciate the scale of it all. So once again Gary, it's a pleasure to watch your videos, thank you very much.

This video is pretty good. I thought he may introduce some complicated name through this video for intruducing the kernel when I opened, but it is not. Every sentence he said is clear and simple, which make people never realise "kernel" can understand.

If I had received explanations like this ten years ago my abilities at IT would have come on by leaps and bounds. Many Thanks.

KFC also has a kernel called kernel sanders

Damn you explained me what Kernel is, my computer science professor at university couldn't explain it to my colleagues in just above 2 weeks....

ive been flashing and jailbreaking my phones since galaxy s i9000 and iPhone 2G days as a hobby by going on forums and following tutorials. I pursue a career in medicine and I am remotely related to Computer Science or any other technical stuff. i did come across a few explanations to my que for kernels and by far this was the best explanation i could understand. TYVM !

Linux kernal is really optimized, and is continually worked on by the community. Win!

Would be so cool to hang out with Gary Sims and talk tech with him!! The man knows a thing or two about the devices we use in everyday world use. GREAT VID!!!

Gary, you are the man, man. You cannot stress enough that you absolutely need root access to properly install a custom kernel. That saves people a lot of headache if they try to find a definitive answer whether or not you need root access to install a different kernel. My conclusion, custom rooms can be flashed via custom recovery which only requires an unlocked bootloader because it is basically end user stuff.

In general terms, Gary’s coverage of the major points of what makes a kernel definitely ranks among the best, captain!

this is my assignment that i designed the kernel for the android devices. This video is help for me

this type of stuff is what makes you guys THE Android authority. keep it up guys

Beautifully explained.....failed to explain many times in interviews about kernel..read many books...did not understand properly......

You are just AWESOME, thank you for these videos, they are great!

Gary - another outstanding presentation. I learned something beyond the restaurant waiter analogy I learned when I started messing around with root. Thank you.

Good Video and Explanation :)

Man this video would be a wickedly challenging drinking game if you had to take a shot every time he says, "Curnull".

Thank you for you contribution on Kernel. How explicit it was appreciate your effort.

Never had it so concise! Uni seems a lifetime away. Thanks for uploading

Your voice is soooo relaxing

The way he says "kernel" is so satisfying and relaxing. No homo😂

Thanks for sparking the interest. Nice little introduction with historical perspective which is very important to understand where we stand

Knowing that low-level part of OS coding is bloody hard, I don't even wonder how hard it is to make a good kernel.

I use a custom kernel for my Note 2. It gives much more configuration options, and it improves the audio quality and boosts up the volume when I use headphones. Much better than the original kernel.

2:14 just saving this for myself, thanks for the video!

great work! you're my favorite RU-vidr on AA since every time I watch one of your videos I learn something new.

" .. computers are incredibly dumb. All they're doing is following instructions. " You should meet humans, they struggle to achieve the above

Great explanation. And if IT videos ever get boring there's always the 6 o'clock news 😅

I come to android authority just for Gary's videos.

Thanks Gary! I've been wondering what a kernel is.. Finally the time has come.

damn this guy knows his shit. expert level explanation. well done sir.

Excellent job Gary! And thank you soo much for the explanation. I was not knowing anything about kernels. Now I got an idea. Thank you, Android Authority.

I loved how Gary explain Tech!

I used to run Cyanogenmod on my phones many years ago and undervolting during those days helped with the terrible battery life of that era of phones. Today is less about battery and more about security and privacy though and thankfully there are options! I love this explanation, where was this video in 2004 when I first started putting Linux on old computers? I definitely could have used it 🙂

Awesome explanation. Will just have the word "kernel" stuck in my head all day. One more time: kernel.

So the kernel is like a magical little man we have in our device doing thousands of tasks and taking notes at the same time

Love all of these kind of videos, very interesting to learn all the different things that go in inside phones and computers, keep up the awesome work! :D

Rock on Gary, your explanations are AWESOME! You should go over some of the most common partitions in Android

*Even if i dont know his name, i would say his name is Gary*

Good Overview about Monolithic and micro Kernel, good job. ⭐⭐⭐

Excellent video! Loved it very much

Gary, you said near the end of the video that these companies spend millions finding the perfect balance of performance and battery life. What irritates me is that these companies still screw up the performance and/or battery life despite the fact that they have all the best engineers that money can buy! The Oneplus X for example performs like garbage when gaming on the stock kernel setting, yet when you switch it over to the more conservative setting, gaming performance dramatically improves. Can you explain that? How about my LG G4? While on Lollipop, it had pretty good battery life along with fairly good gaming performance. But now with Marshmallow, it feels like I'm gaming with an $80 tablet with poor battery life. Sluggish, yet power hungry! I'm not trying to harp on you or anything, but I find it perfectly understandable when users want to tweak the performance and battery life of their kernels because the companies couldn't get it right on their own. Spending millions doesn't mean diddly when you actually test these devices in the real world. If the companies actually got it right with giving us the optimal performance and battery life the first time, then there would hardly be any need for custom ROMS and kernels.

As far as I know kernel is not the lowest piece of software on every OS, it is so in Linux. On other operating systems like Windows or some real time operating systems like FreeRTOS you have device drivers/HAL (hardware abstraction layer) that are not part of the kernel nor a part of OS. So the OS has certain APIs to certain hardware modules and then it is the task of driver developers to create drivers that actually implement those function calls from OS API. Maybe I'm wrong, if so feel free to correct me.

Your channel is great man! I am an electronics student and we don't get this quality information even though we're working with microcontrollers all the time.

Favorite section of AA, and as always, Gary delivers :) Thank you for sharing with us this awesome info

Want to have a good time? Take a shot every time Gary says the word "Kernel." lol

Plethora of knowledge as always, great stuff Gary

thanks Mr.Gary ! i wish i can have you as my teacher back in the college.

Man what a great video. Simple, yet informative enough. Thanks.

I absolutely love you. I could listen to you talk about this shit all day.

I personally believe that the creation of a whole new operating system from the kernel up is a good idea. Honestly I like the idea of an os that is super simple and allows it to utilize as mich of the hardware as possible.

This is pure tech content .. Superb explanation ..

I like Gary and his explanation..... but I don't like the glare on his glasses and a thumbs up for your detailed explanation.... I wish I had a teacher like you in my college then I would've loved to have a convo

About the bricking, bricking is only possible if the bootloader isn't unlocked while trying to use a custom kernal, bootloader unlocked can allow u to reinstall the rom again, with Xiaomi phones it says "fastboot mode" if u don't have a os installed on ur phone which I'm glad they added cuz in some phones u can't reinstall roms even if the bootloader is unlocked it just won't straight up install or boot.

It's what gets stuck between your teeth when you eat popcorn.

Very succinct summary at the end.

Excellent video! Clear and concise, as all things related to education should be.

Thanks. This helped me understand reading about Kernels in my Securing Systems textbook by Schoenfield.

Though I already know all about it but still it's great to hear it from Gary😀

100% less music and its perfect video

For some reason, I'm suddenly in mood for KFC.

We all need someone in real life to explain computer stuff like this in simple terms...

Thank you, I have been trying to find a clear explanation of what is a kernel

my handsfree set burst by Gary's audio mode. Goood job though.

Absolutely love Gary Explains! keep them up please

There should be more videos like this on youtube. Teaching us some little notions about computer science.

"The teacher" did I have anything else to say about this man?

👌excellent,was just having a discussion with some genius in the wonderful youtube comment section about what a linux kernel is. What linus actually made, and what an operating system is.

Thank you! I've been wondering what a kernel was for quite some time.

I wish my computer science prof was like you.

I always enjoy Gary's videos. Great video man! God bless ya! :)

i always wanted to understand kernel i was also commented on sir garry previous videos finally it's here thnk u

Thanks all you are an excellent explainer and by the way I know your channel more than 10 years doing good 👍 job

can I double like this. Gary's presentations are really easy to follow.

Okay, so basically I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

Great work, Gary. Absolutely enjoyed this video. Keep posting content like this. Cheers!

4:43 Andy Tanenbaum entitled his USENET posting “Linux Is Obsolete”. He saw it as dumb that somebody would be creating a new monolithic kernel in 1992, since the future obviously belonged to microkernels. Guess what? Here we are, a quarter of a century later, and Linux has essentially conquered the entire computing world. And microkernels are still a solution in search of a problem.

no one realizes that "GB" stands for "Gary Byte" this guy is just amazing!

Another cracking video Gary.

The thing about changing kernel is the compatibility with peripherals (camera, sensors, backlight) Mainly because they are binaries which aren't mean to run on others kernel causing low performance on them.

HardwareKernelDrivers(in other words, Kernel addons)OSSoftwares

Thank you for the video. It is awesome to know what it is inside.

Building your own Kernal is like building your own car, possible. But you better know what your doing.

Excellent as usual Gary. Delightful video :)

Great lecture, don't rush through the information intensive slides though.

Thanks. I always thought a kernel was that annoying thing that gets stuck in my teeth after eating popcorn.

Videos like this will be why our robot overlords will beat us and laugh, in the future that is.

Gary's Video = Instant Like

You have a great way of Explaining complex ideas! How do you do it?

i like your great sound of kernel, need to study. thanks.

loving this series(? ) Gary! keep up the good work.