Weekly edition	Kernel	Security	Distributions	Contact Us	Search
Archives	Calendar	Subscribe	Write for LWN	LWN.net FAQ	Sponsors

In Theory, Microkernels Are Good

Posted Jul 2, 2010 4:40 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
In reply to: In Theory, Microkernels Are Good by ldo
Parent article: GNU HURD: Altered visions and lost promise (The H)

Apple did manage to make Mach work for them (even if it's a hybrid with BSD). So in practice, millions of users are happy with a reliable desktop OS, even though they have no idea what's inside.

(Log in to post comments)

Posted Jul 2, 2010 16:31 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Didn't they use a single-server architecture though?

Hurd's speciality is its multi-server architecture, so the Mac OSX example doesn't prove much. (If my first sentence is correct.)

In Theory, Microkernels Are Good

Posted Jul 2, 2010 17:22 UTC (Fri) by gnb (subscriber, #5132) [Link]

>Didn't they use a single-server architecture though?
I think so. And I'm pretty sure OSF/1, err... Digital Unix... Tru64... whatever did too. Basically using MACH to provide the low-level primitives in order to make getting a Unix kernel running, and subsequently porting it, easier.