Andrew S. Tanenbaum Quotes

20 Sourced Quotes

Writing a portable OS is not much harder than a nonportable one, and all systems should be written with portability in mind these days.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum
If anyone had realized that within 10 years this tiny system that was picked up almost by accident was going to be controlling 50 million computers, considerably more thought might have gone into it.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum
However, as every parent of a small child knows, converting a large object into small fragments is considerably easier than the reverse process.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum
UNIX does not allow path names to be prefixed by a drive name or number; that would be precisely the kind of device dependence that operating systems ought to eliminate.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum
"Linux is a leprosy; …" This statement is not grammatically or factually correct.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum
A multithreaded file system is only a performance hack.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum
"He" should be read as "he or she" throughout the book.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum
Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design :-) […] Writing a new OS only for the 386 in 1991 gets you your second "F" for this term.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum
I had never engaged in remote multishrink psychoanalysis on this scale before, so it was a fascinating experience.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum
I really am not angry with Linus. Honest. He's not angry with me either.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum
While most people can talk rationally about kernel design and portability, the issue of free-ness is 100% emotional.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum
A lot of other people wanted a free production UNIX with lots of bells and whistles and wanted to convert MINIX into that. I was dragged along in the maelstrom for a while, but when Linux came along, I was actually relieved that I could go back to professoring.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum
The only real argument for monolithic systems was performance, and there is now enough evidence showing that microkernel systems can be just as fast as monolithic systems.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum
The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum
But in all honesty, I would suggest that people who want a modern "free" OS look around for a microkernel-based, portable OS, like maybe GNU or something like that.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum
Will we soon see President Bush coming to Europe with Richard Stallman and Rick Rashid in tow, demanding that Europe import more American free software?

Andrew S. Tanenbaum
If you just want to use the system, instead of hacking on its internals, you don't need source code.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum
Microkernels are not a pipe dream. They represent proven technology.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum
Fight Features. … The only way to make software secure, reliable, and fast is to make it small.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum