If anything is bloated, it's typical linux userland. The linux kernel, with uclibc, busybox, dropbox, and other userland tweaks, can fit onto an embedded route

If anything is bloated, it's typical linux userland. The linux kernel, with uclibc, busybox, dropbox, and other userland tweaks, can fit onto an embedded router with 4MB flash and 16MB ram. Linux caches in RAM pages of files it reads. It will evict them at the drop of a hat if it needs to. Sadly, no matter how many blog entries appear on the subject, people still expect to see free ram, and think linux is bloated when they don't see any. If you don't like that behavior, I don't know if any OSes leave "free" ram untouched. They might call it free though, even when it's used by the OS for caching. On the issue of microkernels vs monolithic, I prefer microkernels for their elegance in theory. If one appears with performance in the ballpark of linux, that glibc supports and that will run linux userland with no problems, I'll switch. I will not, however, give up functionality in the name of ideology.