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In a way, the glory days of Unix, with users using shared infrastructure is closer to cloud than using Linux locally, which gives you freedom, independence and

by forty 3y ago

In a way, the glory days of Unix, with users using shared infrastructure is closer to cloud than using Linux locally, which gives you freedom, independence and privacy.

pjmlp 3y ago
Not when the cloud is running servless and language runtime containers on top of type 1 hypervisors. Zero POSIX.
- monocasa 3y ago
  All of the major serverless runtimes are running on top of Linux by default. And almost all systems on AWS are running on Linux/KVM. Even quite a few that report as Xen are actually running on KVM; Amazon added a bunch of code to KVM to lie on guest hypervisor cpuid leaves as well as emulate Xens hypercall interface.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    No they aren't, if the cloud in question is Azure, as Hyper V doesn't need a kernel to make it work. The controlling OS is a guest as well, with additional privilege. Which happens to be a special Windows build, Azure Host OS. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-os-platform-blog/azure-host-os-cloud-host/ba-p/3709528 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-os-platform-b... Additionally, bare bones Linux kernel infrastructure for Xen and KVM support isn't UNIX. "Transcending POSIX: The End of an Era?" https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/transcending-posix-end-era https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/transcending...
    - monocasa 3y ago
      You know that serverless is orthogonal to unikernels, right? Serverless just means dynamically provisioning an instance in response to the load balancer seeing a request. There are no serverless runtimes I know of that don't run as relatively regular processes on a host kernel. > Additionally, bare bones Linux kernel infrastructure for Xen and KVM support isn't UNIX. > "Transcending POSIX: The End of an Era?" Xen and KVM aren't equivalent here. KVM is ultimately an interface involving file descriptors, mmap(2), read(2), write(2), etc. IMO while not being UNIX™ it still very much embodies the UNIX spirit.

by forty 3y ago

In a way, the glory days of Unix, with users using shared infrastructure is closer to cloud than using Linux locally, which gives you freedom, independence and privacy.

pjmlp 3y ago

Not when the cloud is running servless and language runtime containers on top of type 1 hypervisors. Zero POSIX.

monocasa 3y ago
All of the major serverless runtimes are running on top of Linux by default. And almost all systems on AWS are running on Linux/KVM. Even quite a few that report as Xen are actually running on KVM; Amazon added a bunch of code to KVM to lie on guest hypervisor cpuid leaves as well as emulate Xens hypercall interface.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  No they aren't, if the cloud in question is Azure, as Hyper V doesn't need a kernel to make it work. The controlling OS is a guest as well, with additional privilege. Which happens to be a special Windows build, Azure Host OS. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-os-platform-blog/azure-host-os-cloud-host/ba-p/3709528 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-os-platform-b... Additionally, bare bones Linux kernel infrastructure for Xen and KVM support isn't UNIX. "Transcending POSIX: The End of an Era?" https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/transcending-posix-end-era https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/transcending...
  - monocasa 3y ago
    You know that serverless is orthogonal to unikernels, right? Serverless just means dynamically provisioning an instance in response to the load balancer seeing a request. There are no serverless runtimes I know of that don't run as relatively regular processes on a host kernel. > Additionally, bare bones Linux kernel infrastructure for Xen and KVM support isn't UNIX. > "Transcending POSIX: The End of an Era?" Xen and KVM aren't equivalent here. KVM is ultimately an interface involving file descriptors, mmap(2), read(2), write(2), etc. IMO while not being UNIX™ it still very much embodies the UNIX spirit.