Linus Torvalds answers Slashdot questions
Once in a while Slashdot runs a story to collect and vote questions to be asked of a person of interest. This time, it’s Linux kernel’ father – Linus Torvalds. As always with Slashdot, the questions are on a variety of subjects – Linux kernel, git, books, copyrights, and so on – and, as always with Linus, the answers are to the questions – nothing simple-sentenced or automated. Some answers are just pointers to history, others are thoughts “as of this moment”, and yet others are reflections generalized much further than source code.
Btw, it’s not just microkernels. Any time you have “one overriding idea”, and push your idea as a superior ideology, you’re going to be wrong. Microkernels had one such ideology, there have been others. It’s all BS. The fact is, reality is complicated, and not amenable to the “one large idea” model of problem solving. The only way that problems get solved in real life is with a lot of hard work on getting the details right. Not by some over-arching ideology that somehow magically makes things work.