Interview with Andrew Tanenbaum, Creator of MINIX

"What made you decide to make MINIX based on a microkernel rather than a monolithic kernel?

"Good software engineering principles dictate that your programs are modular. You don't want a bug in one piece to bring down the whole thing if that can be avoided. A microkernel is much better engineered and is more modular and easier to understand. Monolithic kernels are still too big and unreliable. My metric is the TV set. The system should run for 10 years with a total of zero failures for 99.9% of the users."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• Linux: The 0.01 Release(Jul 28, 2007)
• Free Software magazine: MINIX: what is it, and why is it still relevant?(Mar 20, 2007)
• Linux DevCenter: Where Open Source Developers Shine(Mar 06, 2007)
• Vrije Universiteit: Tanenbaum-Torvalds Debate: Part II(May 15, 2006)
• internetnews.com: MINIX Gets (X) Windows(Mar 31, 2006)