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I don't know, it's pretty unlikely at this point that anything will replace Linux as The Kernel. It's like replacing Google as the search engine. On top of tha

by erikb 9y ago

I don't know, it's pretty unlikely at this point that anything will replace Linux as The Kernel. It's like replacing Google as the search engine. On top of that users are currenlty moved away one additional abstraction layer from the kernel, to work with apps inside of containers (see Android, Kubernetes). The OS underneath becomes a static one-version-one-set-of-packages layer. That reduces the amount of people who can even decide to exchange a kernel for another, and these are mostly people who are rewarded for stability instead of experiments. Who would still like to write Android apps, if Android would start to crash more often or change its API drastically? This is a battle that can't be won. Let's move on to one that is still undecided, e.g. which container engine will finally win. Although Docker seems to be the most likely favorite already at this point, I'd still like to see if nspawn will do a systemd move and just replace the alternatives.

coldtea 9y ago
>I don't know, it's pretty unlikely at this point that anything will replace Linux as The Kernel Depending on the domain (embedded, IoT, industrial, medical, etc), tons of other kernels are used (and prevail). We're not necessarily talking web services here. >This is a battle that can't be won. Let's move on to one that is still undecided, e.g. which container engine will finally win. That's a totally different concern.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  Those tend to be tiny realtime kernels, single core, limited memory size etc. The solutions used there tend to not scale to bigger hardware.
- erikb 9y ago
  Yes there are always special cases that use special tools. But add all computers in data centers + all smart phones and you may have a factor bigger than 1000:1. For the broad mass of people it's totally irrelevant that there is an edge case that makes power use of special kernels. And no the container war is not a totally different concern. That's the current main concern which influences most people and how software will be administrated (and therefore developed) in the next 20 years.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >And no the container war is not a totally different concern. That's the current main concern which influences most people and how software will be administrated (and therefore developed) in the next 20 years. I'm not really sure. I think containers (if we're talking of the Docker type) is a hype. But in any case, totally different concern doesn't preclude it being important. Just irrelevant to unikernels.

by erikb 9y ago

coldtea 9y ago

>I don't know, it's pretty unlikely at this point that anything will replace Linux as The Kernel Depending on the domain (embedded, IoT, industrial, medical, etc), tons of other kernels are used (and prevail). We're not necessarily talking web services here. >This is a battle that can't be won. Let's move on to one that is still undecided, e.g. which container engine will finally win. That's a totally different concern.

AstralStorm 9y ago
Those tend to be tiny realtime kernels, single core, limited memory size etc. The solutions used there tend to not scale to bigger hardware.
erikb 9y ago
Yes there are always special cases that use special tools. But add all computers in data centers + all smart phones and you may have a factor bigger than 1000:1. For the broad mass of people it's totally irrelevant that there is an edge case that makes power use of special kernels. And no the container war is not a totally different concern. That's the current main concern which influences most people and how software will be administrated (and therefore developed) in the next 20 years.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >And no the container war is not a totally different concern. That's the current main concern which influences most people and how software will be administrated (and therefore developed) in the next 20 years. I'm not really sure. I think containers (if we're talking of the Docker type) is a hype. But in any case, totally different concern doesn't preclude it being important. Just irrelevant to unikernels.