basic newbie ?

[gabriel07]

what is the difference between a monolithic and a modular kernel

and what would Red Hat 7.0 be

thanks

-gabriel out

[bdg1983]

Monolithic is when all device support (modules) are built into the kernel. This of course make the kernel quite large though with pc's these days having a lot of memory, it doesn't really matter that much.

Modular kernels are when some of the device support are compiled as modules and loaded when needed or loaded through /etc/modules.conf or /etc/modules/.default

Redhat 7.0 is probably a modular kernel distro. If you have it installed, then from a terminal/commandline, issue the command 'lsmod' and if you see a list of modules, then it is a modular kernel.

Also check in /lib/modules/[KERNEL_VERSION] to see if there are any modules.

Make sense?