On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Aitor Santamaria Merino wrote: > I like DOS despite its limitations. Some say that DOS is monolothic, but > I can't understand this, bearing in mind that there are loadable device > drivers, and many other stuff that is "plugged" by hooking interrups. I > tend to consider that Interrupt/Functions is the "message passing > system" of the realmode.
DOS is monolithic. realmode with message passing exists, see Minix; it's just that realmode cannot enforce memory corruption. With a microkernel each of the OS parts would run in completely independent memory spaces. With DOS you have device drivers running in kernel space, i.e. you plug them under the DOS. With a microkernel you can have, say, the whole filesystem as a process above the microkernel. The commercial predecessor of the FreeDOS kernel (DOS/NT) used a microkernel though. http://www.freedos.org/faq/cgi-bin/fom-serve/cache/33.html This approach doesn't play well with MSDOS compatibility however (the old problem that DOS programs know too much about DOS internals so there is only limited room to play in). Linux also has loadable (and unloadable) device drivers in the form of modules and that doesn't make it a Microkernel either. Bart ---------- list options/archives/etc.: http://www.topica.com/lists/fd-dev unsubscribe: send blank email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?bz8Rv5.bbRv4l.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
