5 ms·
I work in the embedded area and it is true that these approaches are more successful here. But I think that is due to real pressure for memomy and speed or real
by raxxorrax 5y ago
I work in the embedded area and it is true that these approaches are more successful here. But I think that is due to real pressure for memomy and speed or real time applications. That isn't really the case for general purpose devices like PCs. Those have an unlimited amount of memory and CPU power.
I might try it for embedded devices some day.
- pjmlp 5y agoThe irony is that hypervisors and containers have basically taken away whatever benefits monolithic kernels might have. OS X and Windows are much better in this regard than GNU/Linux/BSDs with their ongoing efforts to move all drivers to userspace, even though they will never be fully pure microkernels when done with it.
- raxxorrax 5y agoHe, true. Although I wonder if microkernels tend to expose more lower level function in user mode that could be relevant to overall system security. The big problem is probably memory access, which would be prohibited in user mode, but maybe there are other security implications (I couldn't answer that question). Other than improved security that may also be protected by a hypervisor, you might still gain more stability when pushing drivers to user mode. Or your hypervisor has a bug and allows a guest to gain privileged kernel access. Not a security expert, so this is mainly guess work.