[geeks] Google announces Google Chrome OS

[der Mouse]

> I think most of this is due to the underlying Darwin kernel being a
> Microkernel rather than the more traditional monolithic [...]

Certainly.

> What is your experience with other microkernel operating systems?
> Have you played with either Minix or NeXTStep?

Minix, no.  NeXTStep - a little, the older versions, back when NeXT was
still making hardware too.

> How do they compare at the deeper levels that your complaints about
> OS X seem to originate?

Most of my complaints about OS X actually are more properly gripes
about lack of documentation.  Which, given its intended target, aren't
entirely unreasonable, but still can be a problem.

As for how they compare?  NeXTStep, like Darwin, struck me as "Unix at
the surface, less so when you dig".  I remember it as being documented
substantially better than OS X - for example, I think the underlying
Mach stuff had manpages - though the NeXTStep memories are much, much
older (and correspondingly fuzzier) than the Darwin ones, and the
Darwin experience was much more narrowly focused and thus likely to
miss things outside that focus.  But I do know that most of the daemons
I found in the boot scripts when trying to make the network exist had
no manpages.  (I eventually addressed the underlying desire behind
those efforts in another way.)

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