Talisker Personalities are packaged combinations of system-wide and per-user services, launchers, libraries and applications which provide a particular execution environment. With no personalities enabled, a Talisker system is able to boot and load device drivers, and provide a command-line emergency rescue interface.
Personalities can be self-contained, or integrated into the system. Self-contained personalities are typically (but not exclusively) those which which operate within virtual machines. Self-contained personalities may establish communication channels with the host system to enable file sharing, clipboard synchronisation, and other similar features.
In contrast, integrated personalities will operate as any native process does, with the same access to files and other resources. The contents of the personality bundle installed on the system for an integrated personality may be minimal — consisting of shared frameworks and services which support applications built for that personality. Often (but again, not exclusively), binaries for an integrated personality are native executables which simply make use of the frameworks provided by that personality.