R Joseph Wright wrote: > > What is the big advantage of using a mach microkernel? Is it used > because the developers didn't want to reinvent the wheel and thus chose > to use a preexisting platform from which to begin a new os?
AFAIK, yes. But Mach also offers a rich set of semantics to work from. However, the Hurd itself is mostly microkernel independent and could be ported to other microkernels. > Or is it because it has special stability features? I know the hurd is > said to be crash-proof. And apple's new os x runs on a mach kernel, > doesn't it? They claim it is crash-proof. Are they doing a similar > thing with os x as the hurd? Note that all other mach based OS are single server, while the Hurd is a multi server OS. No operating system is crash-proof, because of bugs. Also, the Hurd does not handle out of ressources (out of memory, out of disk space) conditions gracefully. Apart from that, if one non-essential Hurd server dies (crashes), the Hurd will survive though. Maybe this is what you mean. Thanks, Marcus
