LCA: Andrew Tanenbaum on creating reliable systems [LWN.net]

LCA: Andrew Tanenbaum on creating reliable systems

Posted Jan 18, 2007 4:36 UTC (Thu) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047)
Parent article: LCA: Andrew Tanenbaum on creating reliable systems

Linux may not move towards a microkernel design anytime soon. But it can possibly be done
piecemeal, in the sense that kernel modules could be migrated to userspace. This would,
however, require a "stable module API", which they don't want for reasons Greg KH has outlined.

Still, Minix could provide an interesting platform to work on this design. I don't see it replacing
Linux anytime soon, but who knows what may happen in ten years?

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contras (and a bit of philosophy)

Posted Feb 1, 2007 13:36 UTC (Thu) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link]

With this license and sort of leadership, I guess it will be as irrelevant in ten years as it is now.

BSDL has proven to facilitate intra-projects which rather are in their own loop and not easily doing I/O in terms of development, and a stance like "if you were my student" doesn't help to create real following.

I guess it's sort of "QNX going opensource" might change things, but not for the mass market (where we see de-appliancization of mobile phones, which can hang or crash these days -- and drain battery in a day).

Maybe it's continuation of "CIO's problem with Linux", namely "nobody to blame". If we use flakey software like Windows (as Tannenbum does), we have lots of code by others to blame; if it's inherently reliable (and running on proper hardware, as one can see it's yet another problem) then it's clearly us to blame, and we don't like that very much deep inside.

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One might start with actually enjoying the day job, particularly its high-quality, useful results which should not require arcane marketing to put down someone else's throat; and not resorting to the entertainment industry out of frustration... to sort of feel the scale of the problem.