I believe that most peoples recognize the name of Linus Benedict Torvalds better than Andy S.Tanenbaum. Maybe I am wrong in this. Linus is the one who created the Unix-style operating system known as Linux, a monolithic OS. Tanenbaum is the one who created the Minix, a micro-kernel based operating system. I still have Tanenbaum’s book ”Computer Networks” on my desk. It was well written and easy to understand. Anyway, I just recently dug out the debate between Linus and Tanenbaum in 1992. I just cannot believe that these two smart guys are so defensive and hot-headed.
Tanenbaum:
Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design. Writing a new OS only for the 386 in 1991 gets you your second 'F' for this term. But if you do real well on the final exam, you can still pass the course.
Linus:
Well, I probably won't get too good grades even without you: I had an argument (completely unrelated - not even pertaining to OS's) with the person here at the university that teaches OS design. I wonder when I'll learn.
Why all of sudden Tanenbaum popped up with the comment that Linus won’t get a higher grade? Is this some kind of old mentality that we should do thing according to our professor or else we won’t get a higher grade? Anyway, Tanenbaum has a good advice to the public “use it before making any comments”. He looked frustration that a lot of peoples haven’t used his MINIX and kept on complaining that it was sluggish. I observed that many claims from the Linux developers (1992) have solved by minix developers. Read the latest posting from Tanenbaum about the Minix vs Linux.
2 comments:
I think the main problem people recognise from microkernels is that it's generally slower than a monolithic kernel with many layers of calls.
I also think that it's hard to get momentum for a new OS especially when there are so many out there already. That said, the microkernel philosophy is actually a good one and I hope that it succeeds.
Since developers have felt comfortable with the programming model on UNIX style platform, it’s really hard for people to make a change.
The MINIX designer made a mistake by charging the license fee at the early stage. Linux gains the momentum at the very early stage
and help by the free advertisement form world-wide developers as well :)
I have felt that AST was quite arrogant in certain senses especially during the debate in comp.os.minix. Anyway, micro-kernel will be well suited for embedded system. I do agree that shared data structures are difficult to handle.
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