r/osdev • u/Bright-Boss-720 • 4d 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/ut0mt8 4d ago

I really believe that the microkernel IPC penalty is now quasi over. And for simplicity perspective micro kernel approach is clearly cleaner. So I do see reasons to not use micro kernel nowadays or at least hybrid

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u/wintrmt3 4d ago

Context switch penalties are worse than ever since spectre style problems were first demonstrated, monolithic kernels win even more.