4 ms·

You don't mind drivers being half as performant as they were before, with the only benefit being they're easier to distribute? Why? How is that beneficial to an

• bad_user 7y ago
  The browser is a really good sandbox. The security of browsers is also what makes web apps easy to distribute. That said I don't see the point of writing drivers in webassembly. If you want better security for drivers, there are better endeavors like microkernel architectures which Linux still isn't using.
• Octoth0rpe 7y ago
  > You don't mind drivers being half as performant as they were before, with the only benefit being they're easier to distribute? A different way of phrasing this would be "would you prefer a driver that uses 2% of your cpu vs no driver at all? Note that if the hypothetical non-existent driver was written in c, it would only take 1% of your cpu" > Why? Because the alternative for many alternative OSes is no driver at all. > How is that beneficial to anyone except the person packaging the driver? Because if it's more convenient for the packager, then there's a better chance that they'll package a driver that way, which means I'm more likely to actually get the driver in the first place.
• inlined 7y ago
  Are drivers actually being written in WASM? In Windows, drivers often require kernel-space code, which require a higher level interrupt request level (IRQL). Incorrect dependencies in IRQL are the leading cause of BSOD[0]. If WASM got this right, it would be impressive. It also might mean that compromising the sandbox is Very Dangerous. [0] IRQL exception was at least the leading cause when I was a Core OS developer for Windows.