"Anthony W. Youngman" <thewolery@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote in message news:NZJktvDi7yj$EwcG@thewolery.demon.co.uk...
> Just like the academics were
> brainwashed into thinking that microkernels were the be-all and end-all
> - until Linus showed them by practical example that they were all idiots
"The academics" (presumably you mean Tannenbaum et al) never
claimed that monolithic kernels could not obtain market acceptance;
they never said anything about market acceptance. Instead, they
had identified a number of weaknesses of monolithic kernels and
pointed out that a microkernel architecture didn't suffer from these
problems. Certainly the monolithic kernel is easier to implement.
Linus set out to build a unix kernel workalike, and he chose
the easiest path, copying architecture from the 1970s, along
with all the weaknesses that those idiot academics had identified
years earlier. Since then, his monolithic kernel has gotten a lot
of marketshare, due to a number of different reasons, none of
them being architectural superiority.
Marshall