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#! rnews 2409 sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!daffy!uwvax!uchinews!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!news.cloud9.net!cloud9.net!tls From: tls@cloud9.net (Thor Lancelot Simon) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: The Future of FreeBSD... Date: 21 Jul 1995 19:18:56 GMT Organization: Cloud 9 Internet, White Plains, New York, USA Lines: 35 Message-ID: <3uouj0$gk@news.cloud9.net> References: <3uktse$d9c@hal.nt.tuwien.ac.at> <3ulsro$ssl@agate.berkeley.edu> <Ek3eKzC00ggL1EveAS@cs.cmu.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: cloud9.net In article <Ek3eKzC00ggL1EveAS@cs.cmu.edu>, <Matthew.White@cs.cmu.edu> wrote: >Excerpts from netnews.comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc: 20-Jul-95 Re: The >Future of FreeBSD... Jordan K. Hubbard@violet (5085) > >> In fact, many members of the project would LEAVE were we to suddenly >> jump on the Mach bandwagon since universal agreement >> on microkernel technology is hardly here, and there are in fact a number >> of detractors alive and well in the UNIX camp. > >To my mind, the microkernel is the way of the future. With increasingly >diverse processor architectures available, this is one technology that >will keep things manageable. With microkernels, a development effort >can proceed with far fewer individuals because the maintainance cost of >additional platforms is minimal. Thus we can have a situation better >suited for small businesses and public domain developers. Instead of >large numbers of mediocre programmers producing huge amounts of mediocre >code (as many firms seem to do), we have a small number of excellent >programmers producing a smaller, but functionally equivelant, amount of >excellent code. > >There's a strong performance argument, because microkernels seem >inherently slower. It is my opinion that advantages outlined above >heavily outweigh this, especially when one considers the high >performance offered by new processors of today. There will come a time, >soon, when the added stability and feature sets of microkernel OSes will >dominate. Anyone who believes in this kind of ugly software layering is strongly encouraged to read Henry Massalin's PhD dissertation, ftp://ftp.cs.columbia.edu/reports/reports-1992/cucs-039-92.ps.Z. -- Thor Lancelot Simon tls@cloud9.net Somewhere they're meeting on a pinhead, calling you an angel.