Question

Which part of the UNIX operating system interacts with the hardware?

(a) Kernel

(b) Shell

(c) vi editor

(d) application program

This question was posed to me in an online interview.

Question is taken from Introduction to UNIX topic in section The Unix Architecture & General Purpose Utilities of Unix

Answer 1

The correct choice is (a) Kernel

For explanation I would say: The kernel is the core of the operating system. It is a collection of routines written in C which directly communicates with the hardware. User programs that need to interact with the hardware access the services of the kernel. There is only one kernel running on a system, unlike shells which can be multiple.