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Comment on Bits from the Debian GNU/Hurd portersparent

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it seems that to say that OS X was designed around the microkernel model, but had to give it up is misleading.

XNU, OS X's kernel, is based on the Mach microkernel, but also leverages some monolithic design in some cases.

In any case, it seems that Debian GNU/Hurd would be a worthwhile place to experiment with such technologies with a familiar runtime.

Sorry for the confusion - that's what I meant. They both vaguely work around the microkernel architecture, except where it's not desirable for performance reasons - so for example on my Mac basically every hardware driver runs in supervisor mode.

I agree with the premise that it's more hackable, though.

According to this: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/0506.mk3.html

It states that the Mach kernel used in OSX was Mach 2.5 which was not a micro-kernel (as opposed to Mach 3.0) and is not used in OSX as a micro kernel.

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