Kernels

[Aggelos]

Hello, I was just wondering about operating systems use of Kernels anyone who knows enough about it could they explain if they think the monolithic kernel approach still be the way or will micro kernels have a greater opportunity to prove their worth in operating system operation and robustness? please explain your answer if you can, i think it's still a big debate so i think it's a good topic🙂

 

[TonyRic]

http://www.systhread.net/texts/200510kdiff.php

 

[Aggelos]

Well.. I was thinking more of a discussion about it😀 but tnx anyway..

 

[Nothinman]

http://people.fluidsignal.com/~luferbu/misc/Linus_vs_Tanenbaum.html

 

[SLCentral]

Originally posted by: Aggelos
Hello, I was just wondering about operating systems use of Kernels anyone who knows enough about it could they explain if they think the monolithic kernel approach still be the way or will micro kernels have a greater opportunity to prove their worth in operating system operation and robustness? please explain your answer if you can, i think it's still a big debate so i think it's a good topic🙂

Sounds like someone has a school paper to write...

 

[drag]

haha.

Microkernels are mostly obsolete nowadays. It's a good idea, but they ended up being way to complex and slow for practical use. There is a lot of documentation of why this is, of course. google around.

Out of all the microkernels that have been started the only one that I know of that is under current and active development is the L4 family of kernels. http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/L4/

The other one that is commonly used is the Mach microkernel. Mostly dead. Last realy worked on in '95? Part of the Mach kernel is used to make up part of OS X's XNU kernel.. which itself isn't realy a microkernel, at least as I understand it. (the other half of the kernel is either part of a NetBSD or FreeBSD one.. I forget which.)

The only (semi) viable general-purpose OS (as in something usefully outside academic-land) that is based on the Microkernel is GNU/Hurd and it uses the Mach microkernel with Hurd OS objects. It's basicly the same as the GNU/Linux we use, just with a radicially different kernel. They are porting Hurd over to a L4 kernel last I heard. (haha)

edit:
forgot about QNX. It's a unix-like OS designed for embedded arenas that uses a Microkernel. It uses a 'neutrino' microkernel that I don't know anything about.