

The Impact of MINIX (2014) [video] - vezzy-fnord
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86_BkFsb4eI

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htor
Minix have always fascinated me: how it's more modular, smaller, safer and
even self-healing. It makes sense to think those are qualities all systems
should have, embedded or not.

I wonder if the more popular desktop OSes are ever going to change their
monolithic architectures into something similar and adopt these ideas. At this
point it seems unlikely because it's all about speed and flashy features, not
so much reliability and modularity.

It would be a huge amount of work to change the underlying architecture of
some existing million-lines-of-code monster - and that costs a lot of money -
but the benefits of having a microkernel could also outweigh that in the
future.

~~~
zvrba
> I wonder if the more popular desktop OSes are ever going to change their
> monolithic architectures into something similar and adopt these ideas.

Windows graphics stack from Win7 (or maybe already Vista?) can recover from
driver crashes. I experienced it a couple of times (VERY rarely though), and
it worked. The screen blinked, all applications survived and I could just
continue doing whatever I was doing. No need to reboot or even log out.

~~~
agumonkey
Experienced it too, I just realize how 'normal' it felt even though not long
ago everything would have gone down. <notgratefulenoughme/>

