> Yah, he would have failed Linus for his OS design.  But then, Linux
> has moved towards more modularization and away from pure monolithic,
> hasn't it?

In that paper that I mentioned AST talks about how to retrofit
modularization to Linux....e.g. adding layers between kernel and
drivers to check all comms between them.  SELinux comes to mind too.
I'm not sure if you can 'modularize' a monolithic kernel like
Linux enough to make AST happy.

> MINIX predates HURD, surely?

Yes.

> > The idea is out there that as CPU speeds get faster and security
> > become more of a concern....eventually these 2 trends will
> > cross and microkernels + message passing will come into
> > fashion.
>
> Fashion almost always has nothing to do with sensible.

It is more than just fashion.  The trend for decades has been
that what is too slow in one generation is acceptable in the next.
Linus didn't like microkernels cuz they were too slow in 1990s.
It seems natural that a decade or so later all of a sudden
microkernel performance is acceptable to gain security.

Chris


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