I think you're confusing what an OS provides with the concept of configuration maintenance, esp "plug and play." Or to make my point more clearly, all the confi

I think you're confusing what an OS provides with the concept of configuration maintenance, esp "plug and play." Or to make my point more clearly, all the configuration you listed still must be done for an OS by something outside the OS - ie the bootloader (GRUB, etc) or device manager or the like. An OS doesn't magically make configuration for different hardware unnecessary; indeed it doesn't even handle such configuration. > ... and ran on naked hardware. Not quite, drivers are still involved. An OS may load drivers, expose a facade for drivers, or even abstract whole layers of driver subroutines. But it isn't like it's a choice of either OS or bitbang the hardware.