They are ALREADY being put into practice look at XNU it is a Mach implementation supported and being used by Apple, even Sun is using a Mach variant(even though you may not awareness of the same, nor bothered to make your self aware). And irrespective of FUD said by other people, i DO have hope for HURD and Coyotos.
AFAIK pure microkernels have not found favour with commercially popular OSes (including FOSS alternatives). Apple's XNU is hybrid, not a pure microkernel
You miss the point of reply.
A certain person was blabbing FUD about AST and callously dismissing his work as ``theories" and conveniently also dismissing the very ideas and research put forth by researchers all over the world as having no practical merit as a working practical implementation is there. Well if we all had that attitude we'd still be in the stone age. If there's one thing i have learned over a priod of time - NEVER dismiss an idea.
By the DAJ, since you did not reply to my point about AST's books let me give you a little something from one of them :
``In bilogy, extinction is forever, but in computer science, it is sometimes only for a few years.....
...Early operating systems allocated files on the disk by placing them in contiguous sectors, one after another. Although this scheme was easy to implement, it was not too flexible because when a file grew, there was not enough room to store it any more. Thus the concept of contiguously allocated files was discarded as obsolete. Until CD-ROM's came around. There was a problem of growing files did not exist. All of a sudden, the simplicity of contiguous file allocation was seen as a great idea and CD-ROM file systems are now based on it...."
Also, the Solaris kernel is monolithic:
My dear Sir, NO WHERE in my reply have i said that that Solaris is a mirco kernel. What i did say was : ``even Sun is using a Mach variant" :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStep
A design that only solves short term problems eventually dies and takes all dependent on it to the grave.
AFAIK, the main reason Linux (and other commercially used OS kernels) stay away from pure microkernels is speed. The microkernel design doesn't optimize for speed, it does so for clarity in design. Monolithic (and hybrid) kernels optimize for speed while at the same time, having sufficiently clear design.
and is that a reason to dismiss the very idea of Mircro kernels itself ? Again to quote AST ````In bilogy, extinction is forever, but in computer science, it is sometimes only for a few years".
Regards,
- vihan