On Wed, 03 Jan 2018 18:26:04 -0800 Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
Larry McVoy writes:
The
problem is that most people / companies are not that disciplined.
The whole idea is not to hack on the ukernel endlessly but to
build apps on top of it. On something like Mill you won't even
Um, I've been reading about Mill for at least a decade. It's not
real until it ships. It's still vaporware, no?
It is vaporware mainly because it's a largely self/unfunded
effort led by one guy and a very lean volunteer team. I don't
know if it will actually get funded -- in my view there are
enough interesting things in it that it is worth supporting by
one of the big 3 or 4 companies (or a 3 letter govt agency).
Its architecture certainly seems realizable (of course, proof
is in the pudding etc). But even just with ukernels we can
achieve similar isolation & security.
Here is a recent paper:
http://ssrg.nicta.com.au/publications/csiro_full_text//Elphinstone_ZMH_17.p…
They show that seL4+rumpkernel is actually faster than native NetBSD on
the same hardware (atleast on some TCP throughput tests).
I *love* the idea of a microkernel with a bunch of
processes implementing
the OS, it's so much a better design. I also have been in the real world
long enough to think that I'm not going to see Linux replaced with a
microkernel in my lifetime. I wish, but I don't see it happening.
It won't *replace* linux but linux API can be made available
via such processes and a shared lib. You may be right about
real world inertia. And Security is simply not taken seriously
enough. I still think it would be well worth it for
knowledgeable OS folks like you to /actually/ explore this
design space and see what is possible. It would certainly be
more fun than hacking on Linux or FreeBSD!