As much as they are in Linux. Honestly Linux puts more in user space, and allows USB target drivers in user space too (ie. an implementation of the backing USB device).
Edit: and the GPU drivers still very much have a kernel component, and more or less have to. The creation of a GPU instance is super duper privileged, since it's setting up page tables. If you allowed user space to do that, you'd be able to circumvent the MMU.
> My GPU drivers never bork the machine like they do on Linux, just a couple of seconds black screen and business as usual.
None of that has to do with the kernel/user boundary. It's that dwm does a better job recovering than x11. Wayland also does a better job recovering.
> Same applies to USB drivers not doing a kernel panic when plugged on.
Like I said, Linux has had USB drivers in user space for longer than NT, and I've def recently had NT USB drivers bluescreen my system.
> Naturally there is always a part that only the kernel is allowed to own control over.
I mean, not necessarily. I've seen true ukernels run GPU drivers entirely in user space. It's just that NT isn't at all a ukernel. They just like to call it a hybrid because the executive is a different folder in their source code, lol.
