eli5 What’s the difference between os and an kernel
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A good definition is that an OS is a kernel with a shell and some pre-installed programs. A shell is a program which gives you an interface to open the other programs.
For example, if you install the Linux kernel on a machine, it’s going to be pretty useless on it’s own – it *can* run programs, but it doesn’t have any programs to run.
If you install a Linux distribution, that’s going to be a lot more useful, because a Linux distribution is an OS which bundles a user interface (desktop manager) and some useful programs like a web browser by default, so you can do stuff with the computer.
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