Not really. Linux can initialize HW itself. Win3.1 and sometimes 95 relied on DOS to load drivers for some perpherals (Sound cards for example) because there were no Windows drivers available.
That's exactly how I ran Linux on my first PC. It didn't support my sound card, so I had to first boot DOS with the sound card drivers which provided a SoundBlaster compatibility layer, then started Linux from DOS.
Comments
Windows 3.x and 9x are "shells on top of DOS" the same way that Linux can be a "shell on top of DOS": https://github.com/haileys/doslinux
Not really. Linux can initialize HW itself. Win3.1 and sometimes 95 relied on DOS to load drivers for some perpherals (Sound cards for example) because there were no Windows drivers available.
That's exactly how I ran Linux on my first PC. It didn't support my sound card, so I had to first boot DOS with the sound card drivers which provided a SoundBlaster compatibility layer, then started Linux from DOS.