I think you have it backwards. Monolithic kernels are by their very nature more complex to reason about due to all the communication backchannels made possible when everything sits in one process.

This discussion seems vaguely familiar for some reason...[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_deb...

It's definitely a tradeoff. Distributed systems are hard. Isolation is good. One of the best tools we have for isolation is processes and MMUs.

I'm not saying we should all switch, it's just that it's possible, given my understanding of how we're dealing with the intel bug, that one of the arguments against microkernels just went way. So they might make sense in places they previously didn't.

Microkernels mean more insulation and standardization.

Yes, it's a form of complexity; just not what tend to relate to problems.

The complexity comes from when those standards don't let you do something, and you have to do weird things to break through them. Such as leaky abstractions.

Microkernels IPC ought to be enough for anybody.

Seriously, completely generic IPC is not something impossible. You may have some to create some large drivers, but the insulation is still there, even for those.