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Kill Bill's Browser

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Aloone_Jonez:
I agree.

I do take back some of the things I said before, I don't have a problem with Firefox, it has its advantage over Opera (like standards compliance for example). I deem Opera as superiour because it has more features, is lighter and is less of a strain on the system resources, other people disagree and believe standards compliance are more important - each to their own I say.

piratePenguin:

--- Quote from: Aloone_Jonez ---Windows NT has a microkernel design which is technically superiour to Linux's monolithic system, therefore Windows is technically superiour to Linux even though it uses more resources and has less features
--- End quote ---
And then I'd pop in and say "NT is a single-server microkernel, and Linux has basically all the (technical and non-technical) benefits of that already. Single-server microkernels are basically equal to well-designed monolithic kernels (like Linux). If NT was a multi-server microkenel like the Hurd or Minix, and it worked well, it could have functionality that Linux couldn't dream off without a complete redesign and a few sloppy hacks. NT would be technically superior to Linux, there would be no question.".

--- Quote from: ---I deem Opera as superiour because it has more features, is lighter and is less of a strain on the system resources
--- End quote ---
I deem Firefox as technically superior for it's XUL design, which brings many advantages, both technical and non-technical. I never suggested it was functionally or efficiently superior.

H_TeXMeX_H:
If Linux came from Minix, why isn't it a multi-server microkenel ?

cymon:
OSX has a Mach microkernal, too. The point is that sure, Linux uses a monolithic kernel, and so does BSD. Those are both perfectly fine operating systems however, and are both better than NT, in my opinion. In the end, the kernel is just one part of something, and even if you have an awesome kernel, if your filesystem, user interface, etc. is shit, then your operating system is shit.

H_TeXMeX_H:
I found the answer to my own question on Wiki

In the early 1990s, monolithic kernels were considered obsolete. The design of Linux as a monolithic kernel rather than a microkernel was the topic of a famous flame war (or what then passed for flaming) between Linus Torvalds and Andrew Tanenbaum.

There is merit in both sides of the arguments presented in the Tanenbaum/Torvalds debate.

Monolithic kernels tend to be easier to design correctly, and therefore may grow more quickly than a microkernel-based system. There are success stories in both camps. Microkernels are often used in embedded robotic or medical computers because most of the OS components reside in their own private, protected memory space. This is impossible with monolithic kernels, even with modern module-loading ones. However, the monolithic model tends to be more efficient through the use of shared kernel memory, rather than the slower Inter-process communication characteristic of microkernel designs.

Although Mach is the best-known general-purpose microkernel, several other microkernels have been developed with more specific aims. L3 was created to demonstrate that microkernels are not necessarily slow. L4 is a successor to L3 and a popular implementation called Fiasco is able to run Linux next to other L4 processes in separate address spaces. There are screenshots available on freshmeat.net showing this feat. A newer version called Pistachio also has this capability.

QNX is an operating system that has been around since the early 1980s and has a very minimalistic microkernel design. This system has been far more successful than Mach in achieving the goals of the microkernel paradigm. It is used in situations where software is not allowed to fail. This includes the robotic arms on the space shuttle, and machines that grind glass to very fine tolerances (a tiny mistake may cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, as in the case of the mirror of the Hubble Space Telescope).

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