Hacker News Reader

They can generally be run on bare metal, to my knowledge.

I personally don't remember exactly what was meant with "executive".

I've only ever heard of that as the type of a DOS/Windows .exe binary.

that's an executable...

There were publications in the 80s that used that term iirc, and I do recall the term for how slightly incongruous it was, and how it didn't come with an explanation.

In looking into ut some more, it looks like the executive was a term from mainframes for the layer of the kernel that enforced isolation, but I must have read the term being loosely used in pc magazines. Or maybe mockingly?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com