Monlithic vs. Microkernel

[jwilliams]

Hey, I read that famous flame war between Linus Trovalds and the creator of MINIX (microkernel based.) Here's what confused me:

They call linux a monolithic kernel despite it being modularized. What is the difference between a modularized monolithic linux kernel and a microkernel with extensions?

Thanks.

[Javasnob]

I think what they're getting at with modularized is that functionality is usually built into the kernel as opposed to loaded as modules. Some people love modules and have like 60 of them; people like me love functionality in the kernel and have only 2-4 modules loaded at a time.

[jwilliams]

so then are you saying that "microkernel" isn't a well-defined term per say, it just refers to slim kernels that probably have good deal of modules/extensions?

[fernape]

Fundamental difference between micro-kernel and monolithic is that micro-kernel uses message-passing to communicate some user-land programs called servers. The kernel is really little so the probability of crash in it is also little. MINIX 3 has less than 5000 lines of code inside the kernel and linux is up to 2.5 millions.

The disadvantage is that this message-passing increases overload and some things like journaled filesystems and interrupt handling are not easy to implement.

If you are interested in more, you can read one of my articles :P

Best regards

[jwilliams]

wow sweet, this was exactly the info i was looking for - thanks for writing the article

[devil's programmer]

nice article.

[fernape]

Thanks!

[devil's programmer]

Would u mind if i use the article for a College Presentation??
Will use it with due credits,if u dont mind.