How does the Minix source code prove this? Minix has existed long before Linux and yet Linux made enormous gains in popularity while Minix is still minor and very rarely used.
Has the Minix kernel shown significant performance results? (I am not being sarcastic btw, I am honestly asking.)
I know OSX uses something like a micro-kernel and it is a perfectly fine desktop OS, but performance suffers once you get to thousands of threads.
I don't think XNU is a microkernel in any real sense. Certainly not in the sense that the Minix kernel is or was.
The filesystem, device drivers, IPC, network stack, etc is all in kernel space. It's true that it's built around the Mach microkernel, but like most systems that built around it, Mach is just a core layer in the kernel onion, rather than a microkernel in and of itself with the other major components implemented as user-space servers.
A low-level IPC mechanism needs to exist in the microkernel. Higher-level IPC mechanisms that applications will actually care about and use certainly don't need to; see, for example, pipes in Minix.
> Has the Minix kernel shown significant performance results?
"If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year killing everyone inside."
> I know OSX uses something like a micro-kernel and it is a perfectly fine desktop OS,
OSX doesn't use anything like a micro-kernel, it runs Mach (which even microkernel fans ridicule, it is bigger than many monolithic kernels like the Plan 9 kernel), with a monolithic BSD-style kernel directly on top, when your microkernel has (being generous) two components, both huge, I don't think it is like what most people consider a microkernel at all.
It is also fun to remember that people also claimed Windows NT was a microkernel, and then they added the graphics system right into the kernel.
Has the Minix kernel shown significant performance results? (I am not being sarcastic btw, I am honestly asking.)
I know OSX uses something like a micro-kernel and it is a perfectly fine desktop OS, but performance suffers once you get to thousands of threads.