Some people already do that. On PowerPC for example, this option is also
available. The trouble is that Mach is old and has no-one saying `no' to
new features, grotty code or taking out obsolete code. As a result, it's
now extremely nasty and no-one in their right mind wants to hack on it.
Note that the Mach binary is about 15% larger than native Linux (and
then you need to run the Linux single-server on top of it). And we
haven't even started mentioning little issues like SMP, supported devices
and speed.
<plug> anyone interested in helping out on the PA-RISC port should start
at http://www.thepuffingroup.com/parisc/ </plug>
To be fair to microkernels though, Mach is not a good poster child.
It was one of the very early efforts and the state of the art has
improved since then. L4 or Fiasco are much more interesting examples,
see http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/fiasco/ for details. They've even
implemented a Linux server.
-- Matthew Wilcox <willy@bofh.ai> "Windows and MacOS are products, contrived by engineers in the service of specific companies. Unix, by contrast, is not so much a product as it is a painstakingly compiled oral history of the hacker subculture." - N Stephenson- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/