After todays mention of microkernels on Slashdot, I came across this explanation of "hybrid kernels" in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_kernel

This is the first time I see something on Wikipedia, which I think is blatantly wrong. (You can see my comments in the "talk" page associated with the article).

Anyway, the article describes NT's kernel as a "hybrid kernel" sharing architectural concepts or mechanisms with microkernel designs such as "message passing" and "migration of "non-essential" code into user space". This strikes me as rubbish for two reasons:
- In NT messages (IRPs) are used for implementing asynchronous execution, which is essentially an implementation detail and has nothing to do with microkernels. As a matter of fact IRPs are so fragile, that in a sense they achieve an effect opposite to a microkernel.
- All essential subsystems in NT are implemented in the kernel - filesystems, usb, networking, etc. Of course there are components in user space which are considered part of the OS (what isn't in Windows?), but such components are implented in user space in all OS-es.

The article goes to say that a hybrid kernel like NT's is not to be confused with a with monolithic kernels that can load modules like Linux. Again, this seems like nonsense to me - the stable driver ABI (and the closed source) has facilitated creating of many drivers outside of the NT kernel tree, but this is not a conceptual difference. The precise technique of loading a driver/module into the kernel doesn't really matter, if the driver shares the same address space and can have access to kernel structures.

To me the difference between a microkernel and NT (or Linux) is much greater than the differences between NT and Linux, for example.

So, I am not brave enough to edit a page no Wikipedia, but what do you guys thinks ? Am I confused, or is wikipedia wrong ? If it is the latter, should we consider edting it ? (BTW, I am staying away of subjects like which is better, etc - I just want to clarify the definitions)