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Exactly - and I don't think OS X was ever truly a microkernel, it used Mach as the base for XNU, but it was always a hybrid kernel even going back as far as the

Exactly - and I don't think OS X was ever truly a microkernel, it used Mach as the base for XNU, but it was always a hybrid kernel even going back as far as the NeXTStep days. QNX is all that is left and as you say, it's waning -- fast. And ironically, QNX in BlackBerry OS has lost many of the so-called advantages it had in the past, because a large portion of the OS is dedicated to running Android in an emulation layer, thus using a monolithic kernel anyway. sigh Stallman failed and that's OK. Giving the world emacs and GCC was enough, frankly. He used to always make it seem like Linus just got "lucky" and happened to make a kernel before Hurd was done -- but that wasn't the case at all. Linus got a working kernel working faster and Linux proved to be better than anything Hurd could achieve, full-stop.

lelf 13y ago
Exactly - and I don't think OS X was ever truly a microkernel, it used Mach as the base for XNU, but it was always a hybrid kernel even going back as far as the NeXTStep days. Well, it uses it now. (But yes, not as a microkernel.) You never know how something will come handy — learnt Hurd programming => now not afraid of Mac OS X kernel'ish stuff
asveikau 13y ago
> Linus just got "lucky" and happened to make a kernel before Hurd was done -- but that wasn't the case at all. The funny thing is it's not even the case that there's only room for just 1 production-quality open source kernel. Through all this time the *BSDs have done rather well in comparison. We might just conclude that despite a great body of work that we all respect and owe a lot to, maybe GNU/FSF isn't all that great at managing a project. (See also: Emacs Schism, GCC vs. ECGS, GCC vs. LLVM.) (Aside: Personally, I booted Debian GNU/HURD on a Pentium II more than ten years ago to try it out. At the time it was slow and had a bunch of drivers ported from Linux 2.0. It sounds like not much has changed, however I never did get X working, so good job there.)

lelf 13y ago

Exactly - and I don't think OS X was ever truly a microkernel, it used Mach as the base for XNU, but it was always a hybrid kernel even going back as far as the NeXTStep days. Well, it uses it now. (But yes, not as a microkernel.) You never know how something will come handy — learnt Hurd programming => now not afraid of Mac OS X kernel'ish stuff

asveikau 13y ago

> Linus just got "lucky" and happened to make a kernel before Hurd was done -- but that wasn't the case at all. The funny thing is it's not even the case that there's only room for just 1 production-quality open source kernel. Through all this time the *BSDs have done rather well in comparison. We might just conclude that despite a great body of work that we all respect and owe a lot to, maybe GNU/FSF isn't all that great at managing a project. (See also: Emacs Schism, GCC vs. ECGS, GCC vs. LLVM.) (Aside: Personally, I booted Debian GNU/HURD on a Pentium II more than ten years ago to try it out. At the time it was slow and had a bunch of drivers ported from Linux 2.0. It sounds like not much has changed, however I never did get X working, so good job there.)