Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 15 Sep 2004 19:22:31 -0500 | From | Tommy Reynolds <> | Subject | Re: monoholitic, hybrid or not monoholitic? |
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Uttered Matt Kavanagh <matthew@teh.ath.cx>, spake thus:
> > the kernel were mostly descripted as monoholitic. but some sources means > > that the linux kernel is not really monoholitic because of the feature > > of loading kernel modules. > I'd tend towards monolithic because the modules (as mentioned) run in kernel > space.
These discussions are taking the wrong viewpoint. The difference between "monolithic" and "modular" kernels refers to their *internal* organization, not a cosmetic *packaging* decision.
Linux is a monolithic kernel because one kernel routine can call another directly, without intervention of any message passing overhead.
Linux modules are simply packaging exercises that allow some code _not_ originally linked into the kernel image to be grafted into an executing kernel image. Once installed, kernel modules can reference other kernel resources with, again, a straight subroutine reference without any message passing intervention.
All else is quibbling about the color of the ribbon used to wrap up the module code ;-)
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