Re: If QNX is successful, why NOT GNU Microkernels

[Olivier Galibert]

On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 01:25:14AM -0800, Anand Raj wrote:
>  QNX is able to be a successful MicroKernel, but why NOT GNUMach / OSKITMach 
> / L4Mach ?

Mach has some issues that seem to make it intrinsically slow[1], Hurd
has its own issues on top of it that makes it even worse[2], and
functionality-wise it doesn't really seem to give much more than a
pair of funky userspace filesystems like the ftp translator, compared
to monolithic kernels like a modern linux or bsd.  And the userspace
is the same.

QNX is succesful because it's small and fast.  Hurd is neither, and is
so behind the curve that it's hard to find developers motivated by it.
Especially since it's very hard to see what Hurd could propose that is
not already in the other ones.

  OG.

[1] streaming on syscalls, no cache management, heavy tasks, cthreads,
    heavy locks...

[2] follow what a simple read() in a C program has to do before it
    returns with the results and cry