> In the ideal case I would rather want the least possible amount of memory in the Kernel (and maybe have that all statically allocated) in order to maximize st

> In the ideal case I would rather want the least possible amount of memory in the Kernel (and maybe have that all statically allocated) in order to maximize stability and determinism. A while back, I worked for an embedded systems company that developed real-time OSes, compilers, and debuggers. Everything in the Kernel had to be statically allocated, malloc was simply not allowed. Even user-land programs, which could dynamically allocate memory, had to check the return value of malloc to make sure the memory was actually allocated (malloc returns null if it can't allocate memory). It was painful to program in this environment, but over time, I grew to love it. Software developers did not feel like they were developing "Soft"-ware; memory, CPU, I/O, interrupts, and even heat dissipation were not infinite resources you could use without care. These restrictions elevated the development process, and made the "developers" feel more like "engineers".