Andrew S. Tanenbaum 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.

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

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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

Microkernels are not a pipe dream. They represent proven technology.

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

A multithreaded file system is only a performance hack.

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

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

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

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.