Tanenbaum made more predictions than "microkernels will win": > 1. Microkernels are the future > 2. x86 will die out and RISC architectures will dominate the

Tanenbaum made more predictions than "microkernels will win": > 1. Microkernels are the future > 2. x86 will die out and RISC architectures will dominate the market > 3. (5 years from then) everyone will be running a free GNU OS > The usual defense of the first prediction is to point to the growing use of virtualization hypervisors and claim that this counts. It doesn't; hypervisors are not microkernels. Neither are kernels with loadable device drivers and other sorts of modularity; well structured kernels are not anywhere near the same thing as microkernels. When Tanenbaum was talking about microkernels here, he really meant microkernels. https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/TanenbaumWrong https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/TanenbaumWrong Trying to make him "Right" does great violence to his arguments, and we're better served by looking at history honestly, not through distorting lenses. Another interesting post, about hypervisors versus microkernels: https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/HypervisorVsMicrokernel https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/HypervisorVsMi... (Hypervisors are older than microkernels, and they're more practical, and they are, therefore, not the same thing.)