I was cleaning out files on my laptop and saw this, but I don’t follow what it means. ELI5
In: 1
Kernel memory is just RAM that has been allocated for use by the operating system itself (Windows, MacOS, Linux, BSD, etc) rather than the applications (web browser, games, taskbar/start menu, etc). The operating system does need a bit of memory for itself, if only to keep track of all those apps it’s running, but also all the hardware on the system, their drivers, etc.
I’m curious what you actually found, because kernel memory is usually not possible to swap to disk, and wouldn’t be a “file” per se. Closest is a “crash dump”, where the contents of kernel memory are saved to disk if the operating system crashes so that Microsoft or another develop can figure out what went wrong, possibly fix it.
Latest Answers