> Being a microkernel doesn't automatically make you more robust. No, of course, it doesn't automatically do so. But it makes it a whole hell of a lot easier

> Being a microkernel doesn't automatically make you more robust. No, of course, it doesn't automatically do so. But it makes it a whole hell of a lot easier to write a reliable service, if you don't have to deal with all the crap that a monolithic kernel does. In a very real sense, lines of code are a liability: fewer LoC generally translates into fewer bugs in the software. I think you'd find Plan 9 interesting. It deals with many of the issues you're talking about in a rather head on way. In fact, it takes things even further than Hurd might, and allows processes to migrate to different processors, which may be contained on completely different machines.