I am newbie. And I want to know more information about what is a kernel and what does it do. Links and whatever info is welcome. I hope I am making the right question... Most specifically I want to know what is Mac OS X kernel and what does it handle. All I hear are "kernel panics", "stable kernel" etc. and I don't know what it is!
http://developer.apple.com/cgi-bin/search.pl?&q=kernel&num=10&ie=utf8&oe=utf8&lr=lang_en&site=default_collection Start with the first item in the list. Lots of stuff here. Try Google too.
It makes your doohicky work with the thingamawhatsit and if it panics, then the shmangy goes kaput. Score another one for technical terms! Basically, it is the core of your operating system.