So - amongst all that - you may not have picked out that I did actually answer your question, in a very roundabout way, but answered never-the-less…
A kernel and a driver are completely different things. I’m not going to explain the intricacies of the differences here, unless you’re going to pay me - there’s way better resources out there - probably even wikipedia…
RTFM :
Kernel
Driver (device)
On linux - your driver must have kernel support in your current kernel. This is not necessarily the case in Windows or Apple world. e.g. a 64 bit driver written for Windows 7, may, or may not, work on Windows 10’s “kernel”…