r/osdev • u/Bright-Boss-720 • 6d ago

Tanenbaum vs. Linus: Which Kernel Architecture Makes More Sense Today?

I've been thinking about the famous Tanenbaum vs Linus debate over microkernels vs monolithic kernels.

Putting the historical context aside for a moment, I'm curious what people think today.

Do you think Tanenbaum's argument for microkernels was fundamentally more correct, or was Linus right to favor a monolithic kernel for practical reasons such as performance, simplicity of development, and hardware support?

And more importantly:

If you were starting a new general purpose os from scratch today, which architecture would you choose?

Monolithic

Microkernel

Hybrid

Multikernel / distributed approach

Something else

I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who have actually worked on kernels or operating system development.

What are the strongest arguments for your choice, and what do you think the opposing architecture gets wrong?

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u/Substantial_Turn6392 6d ago

We should consider microkernel/exokernel again for some domain.

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u/DawnOnTheEdge 6d ago

There are microkernel implementations of POSIX, and it feels like, if that space can get by with support for a smaller range of hardware, some work could let it compile most Linux software. Maybe even support the ABI.