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2007/05/14
Of late I have been working closely with Jason and its been intellectually very engaging. Recently the subject of "microkernels" came up and Jason sent me this wealth of info:
The difference is that Linux itself is ALL kernel with multiple distributions.
FreeBSD is a complete OS kernel+user spaces. See this:FreeBSD: An Open Source Alternative to Linux http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/linux-comparison/
OSX has taken an interesting path integrating MACH (now their microkernel is called XNU) plus FreeBSD code to create Darwin, to meet their own needs.
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Comparing Solaris, Linux & FreeBSD http://www.opensolaris.org/os/article/2005-10-14_a_comparison_of_solaris__linux__and_freebsd_kernels/Old, but not replaced on the FreeBSD site with something representing v6 so probably still applicable.
The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/design-44bsd/book.htmlFirst chapter in the FreeBSD handbook. Useful. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/nutshell.html
Some things I collected for you....
What is OSX?
http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/arch_xnu.htmlHere is the UNIX time line I mentioned... also lots of cool unix links...
http://www.levenez.com/unix/And its sister language time line... super cool...
http://www.levenez.com/lang/BSD and OSX use a microkernal. Linux is a monolithic kernal. Each have their trade-offs. My opinion is that in the long run a microkernal is better and makes sense. Eventually Linux will wind up there through necessity (again IMHO).
Wikipedia on Microkernals
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microkernel
Read the performance section. And now I see this line at the end that supports what I said above:
"With the advent of multiple-device network-like buses such as USB and [FireWire], more operating systems[citation needed] are separating the driver for the bus interface device and the drivers for the peripheral devices. The latter are good candidates for moving outside the kernel. So a basic feature of microkernels is becoming part of monolithic kernels. "A page from A. Tanenbaum (BTW he wrote the OS textbook I used in college)
Tanenbaum-Torvalds Debate: Part II
http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/reliable-os/
(I might have to try Minux 3And this is the older debate — I wouldn't read it too carefully as it is VERY old...
But in the first post by Linus, he admits microkernals are better. It just was that Linux did just about everything else right. Linux won the "alternative" OS popularity battle.. at least up to now. As I said before, I think Linux is great and hope it continues to thrive, but there are some days of reckoning ahead...
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/appa.html
Met Jason at the Department of Revenue EDS project.
Knows DanMcCreary ; Owns http://archwingInnovations.com ; Loves Python ; has been associated with http://otug.org
Jason is the author of the now famous Parker Projection predicting the percentage of declarative code in the business unit will continue to rise. parker projection@google
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