MS-DOS was not really what people would today consider to be a "true" kernel, as it didn't implement any sort of access controls, boundaries, or other process management functionality. It was more of a set of shared libraries, and also included some standards such as a file system, and program loader format.
Even Windows 1.0, which more directly sat on top of MS-DOS, had to implement considerable amounts of functionality that would be considered more of a kernel than what MS-DOS offered.
Comments
MS-DOS was not really what people would today consider to be a "true" kernel, as it didn't implement any sort of access controls, boundaries, or other process management functionality. It was more of a set of shared libraries, and also included some standards such as a file system, and program loader format.
Even Windows 1.0, which more directly sat on top of MS-DOS, had to implement considerable amounts of functionality that would be considered more of a kernel than what MS-DOS offered.
It can be seen as an exokernel