The microkernel vs. monolithic debate, whether you boys and girls like it or not, rages on. After Tanenbaum's article and an email from Torvalds, another kernel developer steps up, this time in favour of the muK. A developer of the muK-based Coyotos writes: "Ultimately, there are two compelling reasons to consider microkernels in high-robustness or high-security environments: there are several examples of microkernel-based systems that have succeeded in these applications because of the system structuring that microkernel-based designs demand, [and] there are zero examples of high-robustness or high-security monolithic systems."
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Member since:2006-01-01
Few people want to develop HURD. It's had as its basis an anachronistic microkernel that has been mostly passed by by researchers since maybe 1996-1997 in favor of lighter approaches. The less research-oriented folk are more interested in practical usage problems, and Linux has much more inertia in this area. The use-only people are far more interested in pragmatic things like running programs to do work, than kernel implementation techniques. This affects all other alternative operating systems pretty heavily, even if they have as a basis the most monothilic of kernels.
Even now when people look for personalities to slap on top of their light-weight microkernels they just adapt linux to run on them and focus on developing other personalities for domain-specific tasks that interest them.
It's not so much a matter of whether it's theoretically better or not, it's a matter of inertia. Developing an entire operating system from scratch with all of the user-visible functionality of say Windows, no matter what approach taken, is a really difficult. It takes a lot of manpower, and most of that manpower today is devoted to developing Linux.
Member since:2005-07-07
I think that the technical issues are one thing, but what really matters is the leadership. While RMS continues to do a brilliant job, he chose not to focus on kernel issues. Instead, we have a LBT, who continues to do a superior job on Linux. My argument is that if Hurd had a Torvalds, we'd not be squabbling so much about "Linux" vs. "GNU/Linux" as a symbol representing the whole system.
Member since:
2006-03-07
Trying to build the perferct microkernel has cost the GNU project enormously. We now call an operating system (GNU) after its kernel (Linux). Not that I am an FSF fan(atic) or anything, I am just pointing out that getting out a useable kernel instead of a theoretically better one has proven to be highly succesfull for Mr Torvalds and the Linux developers.