Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 5th May 2006 19:54 UTC, submitted by Gary
The micro vs. monolithic kernel debate is now very much alive. Not too long ago, I wrote an article on the merits of microkernels, while a week later we featured a retort. Now, the greatest proponent of the microkernel steps in-- yes, Andy Tanenbaum writes: "Microkernels - long discarded as unacceptable because of their lower performance compared with monolithic kernels - might be making a comeback in operating systems due to their potentially higher reliability, which many researchers now regard as more important than performance." Now, we only need Torvalds to chime in, and it's 1992 all over again.
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Member since:
2005-07-06
The key thing about DVD players and their reliability has little to do with the OS design. It has more to do with the stability of the hardware and the software.
As a person earlier mentioned writing POS systems that ran for years on DOS. If you're dedicating a machine to well defined task, it's much easier to keep it stable and running long term than a general purpose machine capable of running general purpose tasks.
If you have an unlimited number of inputs (inluding potentially aggressive and malicious software), it is much more difficult to harden one of these systems.
Finally, the overall environment that the system is designed for affects the software design and implementation. People look at telnet and ftp today and worry about the security considerations of the protocol, but when those protocols were designed, it simply wasn't an issue. Similar arguments can be said for the DOS and even Windows releases.
Granted there's no excuse today.