Microkernel: The Comeback?

bariswheel writes "In a paper co-authored by the Microkernel Maestro Andrew Tanenbaum, the fragility of modern kernels are addressed: "Current operating systems have two characteristics that make them unreliable and insecure: They are huge and they have very poor fault isolation. The Linux kernel has more than 2.5 million lines of code; the Windows XP kernel is more than twice as large." Consider this analogy: "Modern ships have multiple compartments within the hull; if one compartment springs a leak, only that one is flooded, not the entire hull. Current operating systems are like ships before compartmentalization was invented: Every leak can sink the ship." Clearly one argument here is security and reliability has surpassed performance in terms of priorities. Let's see if our good friend Linus chimes in here; hopefully we'll have ourselves another friendly conversation."

Comments

Hah! Shows You What They Know...

[eno2001]

What consumers expect from a computer is what they expect from a TV set: You buy it, you plug it in, and it works perfectly for the next 10 years. As IT professionals, we need to take up this challenge and make computers as reliable and secure as TV sets.

This comment had me rolling on the floor laughing for hours. The days when you could buy a TV set, plug it in and it works perfectly for 10 years are long gone. And it's only going to get worse. EVERYTHING is being driven by the user these days which is why so many devices are disposable. Who keeps a cell phone for ten years? Could you even expect a ten year old cell phone to have a network to connect to? And now with the advent of HDTV BEHIND us (as in the 90s) we had HD sets that WON'T be compatible with future streams. So all those people who bought HD sets in the late 90s won't be able to use them ten years later. Not to mention that it's very likely that people buying HD sets today won't be able to use them ten years from now because the standards and industry requirements are shifting. How many of you out there bought HD sets that won't meet Windows Vista's security requirments and will have to settle for lower quality or NO output from "premium content" like HD-DVDs?

Much like the consumer electronics industry, the software/OS industry is user driven. Possibly moreso. As long as the users are being made to *think* they need the latest features, security and reliability will ALWAYS take a backseat to performance. A lot of the "lastest features" rely on performance to pull off their magic. The day may come when there is enough horsepower to provide what people expect out of an OS with a Microkernel, but it's not here now and I really don't think it will be for quite some time.

As opposed to:

[hummassa]

whoa, let's reboot the machine... oops, it encountered the same bug it did before; reboot again; oops; reboot again???

(IOW: if the bug is that persistent, you're hosed anyway.)