Mac OS X has the Darwin 10.6.0 Kernel, and Ubuntu has the Linux 2.6 Kernel, so in Windows what is it called?
Answer
The kernel file itself is ntoskrnl.exe. It is located in C:\Windows\System32.
If you view the properties of the file, you can look on the Details tab to see the true version number running. You can see other versions of the kernel on your system under C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-os-kernel* and C:\Windows\winsxs\x86_microsoft-windows-os-kernel*. My current kernel, for example, on Win 7 x64 is 6.1.7601.17592. 6.1 indicates Windows 7. 7601 indicates SP1 (RTM lists 7600). The final number is the current revision. If your system has multiple processors or multiple cores in the processor, the details panel will also show that the original file name is ntkrnlmp.exe. The "mp" here means "multiple processors". At one point Windows used different kernels for a system if it had one or more than one processor. I don't know if this is still the case and the internal filename is still kept this way for historic reasons, or if the single processor core version still exists. I don't have a single core system to test on, currently.
In the WinSXS directory, my system currently has quite a few revisions of the kernel (most from the RTM version of Windows 7): 6.1.7600.16385, 6.1.7600.16539, 6.1.7600.16617, 6.1.7600.16695, 6.1.7600.16792, 6.1.7600.20655, 6.1.7600.20738, 6.1.7600.20826, 6.1.7600.20941, 6.1.7601.17514, 6.1.7601.17592, 6.1.7601.21701.
You notice that my system is not using the highest version of the kernel on the system (6.1.7601.17592 vs 6.1.7601.21701). However, it is using the version which was the last one to be digitally signed so even though the final version number is lower, the file is newer. I'm not sure how MS determines what that final version number is going to be.
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