Re: LINUX is obsolete Linux Inside
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Re: LINUX is obsolete

In article <1992Feb01.002630.14861@bmerh2.bnr.ca> dgraham@bmers30.bnr.ca (Douglas Graham) writes:
> Minix resembles the other systems that use it.  Sure, Minix uses lots
> of tasks and messages, but there must be more to a microkernel architecture
> than that.  I suspect that the Minix code is not split optimally into tasks.

Definitely. Minix shows you how a microkernel works, but it sure doesn't show
you why you would use one.

A couple of years ago I brought this up with Andy, and his response indicated
that he was himself not convinced of the superiority of the microkernel design
at the time. He said (as near as I can recall... this is a paraphrase) that a
message passing design was inherently slower than a monolithic one... which was
news to me: I had (and still have) a PC that was MUCH more responsive than any
UNIX box I ever touched using a message-passing design.

> >   MINIX is a microkernel-based system.

> Is there a consensus on this?

Yes, it's not a well-factored one, and there's no API to the microkernel
interface, but it's a microkernel design.
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