[Arm-netbook] microkernels

[Christopher Havel]

So, as I (poorly) understand it, the idea of a "microkernel" is that each
process/thread/application (I'm not quite sure which) gets its own kernel,
sort of, and that this kernel is somewhat modular in that it only provides
what functionality the application needs from it.

If I'm understanding that correctly -- which I very easily might not, I
only have a somewhat abstract understanding of kernels to begin with, at
best -- it seems to me that things like memory management suddenly become
cooperative efforts, and that could very easily lead to what is typically
non-technically referred to as a massive clusterf***.

Wouldn't it be easier/better, if you're going to rewrite code, to look at
how the code is written now and find ways to make it more compact (or less
sloppy, perhaps, as the case may be) while still providing the same
functionality?

I recognize that we've come a quite long way from things like an Atari
2600, but when you consider the system resources of /that/ machine -- 4k
ROM, 128 *bytes* of memory, a rather nastily-tempered, strict, and
uncooperative graphics controller, and a CPU running at ~1MHz with no
interrupt capability whatsoever -- and what all was done with it by coding
tightly (and the occasional dirty trick or three) -- it seems to me,
admittedly as a non-programmer, that there's a lot that could be done to
streamline the behavior of modern operating systems and the applications
that run within them.

For example, I'm typing this on a 32bit Win7 based HP Mini netbook with an
Atom N450 CPU and 2gb RAM. It seems to me that playing Pandora Internet
Radio in one browser window, with another browser window of nine tabs (and
three of those are static JPEG images retrieved from a search engine, not
proper webpages or anything), and with the file manager having one window
open and another image displayed in an OS-resident image viewer -- that the
described load ought not to very nearly lock the machine up entirely. And
yet, it does -- which, it seems to me, indicates that the gentlefolk
they're hiring over there in Redmond these days, simply do not understand
how to code.

But, then, neither do I...