CentOS mailing list <centos@centos.org> writes:
Matt Shields wrote:
> Not totally acurate.  All VMWare servers (including ESX) are
> customized versions of RedHat Enterprise linux.
AFAIK this is not true, ESX has its own "kernel".
Ralph

ESX Server is a "split-brain" product, much in the same way RTLinux implements hard a real-time kernel that runs the regular Linux kernel as a non-realtime process.

ESX server has its own microkernel ("hypervisor", technically) that runs a version of Linux as the "service console".  In other words, ESX uses Linux to access the console hardware (display, kbd, mouse, etc.), but does not use Linux to provide virtualization services.  I don't know exactly how disk and network I/O are handled.

And yes, the version of Linux is derived from RHEL, but it is emphatically NOT RHEL, nor is it a re-compile like CentOS, nor is it a "clone" of any sort.  It's probably fairly accurate to call it a "fork" of a custom rebundling of RHEL from some point in the past.

-Adam Thompson
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