Editing L4 microkernel family (section)

== Design paradigm ==
Specifying the general idea of a [[microkernel]], [[Jochen Liedtke|Liedtke]] states:

<blockquote>A concept is tolerated inside the microkernel only if moving it outside the kernel, i.e., permitting competing implementations, would prevent the implementation of the system's required functionality.<ref name=Lie95 /></blockquote><!--http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=224075&coll=portal&dl=ACM&CFID=183836&CFTOKEN=65974839-->

In this spirit, the L4 microkernel provides few basic mechanisms: [[address space]]s (abstracting page tables and providing memory protection), [[Thread (computing)|threads]] and [[Scheduling (computing)|scheduling]] (abstracting execution and providing temporal protection), and [[inter-process communication]] (for controlled communication across isolation boundaries).

An operating system based on a microkernel like L4 provides services as servers in [[user space]] that [[monolithic kernel]]s like [[Linux]] or older generation microkernels include internally. For example, to implement a secure [[Unix-like]] system, servers must provide the rights management that [[Mach (kernel)|Mach]] included inside the kernel.