Some comments here imply that it goes well beyond that (indeed drawing font characters in non-VGA text mode shows this), but I think this difference holds -- no

Some comments here imply that it goes well beyond that (indeed drawing font characters in non-VGA text mode shows this), but I think this difference holds -- no GUI widgets or operations in kernel mode, whereas Windows had this since NT. Certainly I always found it scandalous that MS did that GUI stuff in the kernel, even if the NT desktop was unusually smooth as a result. Remember this was at a time when MS was positioning NT as a server OS as well, a server OS with desktop GUI crap in the kernel. Ah hell, I'm still disgusted by it.