If there is one thing that is testimony to the power of microkernels then it is that one. And that 2011 one was avoidable, imo.
The reduction in scope is really gold, it makes it so much easier just to have a small defined interface per program. It is a bit like Erlang/OTP but with C as the core language, the IPC is so lightweight that it becomes the driver behind all library level isolation. So what in a macrokernel would be a massive monolith with all manner of stuff in the same execution ring turns into a miniscule kernel that just does IPC and scheduling and everything else is a user process, including all of the luxuries that you normally associate with user processes: dumps, debuggers, consoles.
What about the reverse, after Claude code implements it, let Gemini/Codex do a code review for bugs and architecture revisions? I found it is important to prompt to only make absolutely minimal changes to the working code, or unwanted code clobbering will happen.
Much research is going into these directions, but I'm more interested in mind-wandering tangents, involving both attentional control and additional mechanisms (memory retrieval, self-referential processing).
Memory in world models is interesting. But I think the main issue is that its holding everything in pixel space (its not, but it feels like that) rather than concept space. Thats why its hard for it to synthesise consistently.
However I am not qualified really to make that assertion.
You can do specialized SLMs with different roles working on problems. Also deterministic workflows. That is what I gathered its use. I know last year, multi-agent scenarios were topping to benchmarks but I don't know if 2025 has been the same.
Linux is behind Windows wrt (Hybrid) Microkernel vs Monolith, which helps with having drivers and subsystems in user mode and support multiple personalities (Win32, POSIX, OS/2 and WSL subsystems). Linux can hot‑patch the kernel, but replacing core components is risky and drivers and filesystems cannot be restarted independently.
Random side fact but this was also a thing map makers did back in the day. Including fake towns. In that way they could identify who was stealing their work.
[0] https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-436/...
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