Thinking Differently About Universal Microkernels

As a not-Macbook owner, I have to yell this into the void: I really like macOS' kernel. Not macOS — XNU. The kernel underneath. XNU's a hybrid microkernel — meaning most of the OS lives in userspace rather than baked into the kernel itself. Device drivers? Architecturally designed to be userspace programs, even if Apple doesn't always do it that way. Crash a device driver, you crash the device driver. Not the whole system. The kernel stays up. The kernel doesn't care. Compare that to Linux, where a buggy driver can take down the entire machine because it's all in the same address space, with the same privileges, one bad pointer away from a kernel panic. XNU's model is just... better in every way. Cleaner. The kernel does the minimum, as the SOLID gods stated on their Single Responsibility Commandment. Everything else is up to the rest of the operating system. XNU is an actual kernel rather than a cob of corn — which in Linux's case, is one fire away from exploding into popcorn. And I w