Tanenbaum said MINIX 3, the most recent version of the operating system which he created 20 years ago, and which aided Linus Torvalds in writing Linux, deploys many of the features he highlighted in his presentation. MINIX today is primarily used as a teaching tool for computer science students worldwide.

"Maybe the direction Linux could go would be [as] the system that is ultra reliable, that works all the time and has not got all the problems that you get in Windows," he suggested.

Although it was a proposition, it may have some weight.