On 6/3/07, Roshan d_rosh2001@yahoo.co.in wrote:
There were issues about maintenance with Monolithic kernel, such as Linux. But is it really difficult to maintain, when there are nearly thousands of contributors to it?
I don't think the issue is as much maintenance as it is simply beauty of design. I guess the modular nature of Linux should make it sufficiently maintainable (I'm not a kernel hacker). The only thing is that finally everything runs as one big lump.
As I understand the difference between the way Linux is implemented and how a microkernel should work is that Linux includes memory management, FS, etc into the core while a pure microkernel will have nothing other than the scheduler in its core. Also, you have the choice of compiling some modules right into the kernel so that they load faster. While that is not at all microkernel-like, it's not even non-modular or difficult/impossible to maintain.
I have a doubt though, probably kernel hackers on list can help. Does the core+servers design of pure microkernels make it any more robust? Meaning, is it possible for memory management to fail without affecting the core and FS manager or something like that?