4 ms·

I realize this is beating a dead horse, but it really is a shame that microkernels didn't win for human-facing Unix systems. This issue was recognized and basic

I realize this is beating a dead horse, but it really is a shame that microkernels didn't win for human-facing Unix systems. This issue was recognized and basically solved decades ago, and we're still almost there.

ianlevesque 3y ago
Yeah, I've wondered a bit if the Spectre class of vulnerabilities was discovered a couple decades sooner if it would have changed the course of history there.
nobleach 3y ago
Hurd any day now, right? I do wonder what this landscape could have looked like if all of the effort had gone behind a Mach-based microkernel. I read all of the back and forth between Tanenbaum and Torvalds. At the time, I was just so excited to see "free and open" winning. I should specify that the XNU Kernel from Darwin/OSX took a lot of my attention when it first premiered.
- Zambyte 3y ago
  Hurd works in the same sense that OpenBSD works. It has very limited hardware support so you'll likely have to run it in a VM, but it does work.
  - ElectricalUnion 3y ago
    If you're willing to split your workload into VMs in the first place I think application-level segmentation like Qubes starts to become a more interesting idea that microkernels.
    - Zambyte 3y ago
      There is a lot of flexibility that you get from microkernels outside of isolation that you don't get from virtual machines. I'm not suggesting use one GNU/Hurd VM for one application (similar to what you would get with Qubes). I'm suggesting using one GNU/Hurd VM for many applications.
dmpk2k 3y ago
This is true for server systems too. I've often had problems which were ultimately only solvable by rebooting large fleets of servers. Had the servers been running microkernels instead, updating services without full restarts would have been trivial in almost all cases. It's just a better approach overall. I curse the path dependency that led to the current situation.
- Zambyte 3y ago
  I consider servers to be human-facing systems. I more meant to account for the fact that L4 is used in Qualcomm modems and Minix is used for Intel ME. I would not consider either of those as human-facing.
ryao 3y ago
They might win in the long term. Linux is moving in a micro-kernel direction with things such as netmap, io_uring, DPDK and SPDK.

ianlevesque 3y ago

Yeah, I've wondered a bit if the Spectre class of vulnerabilities was discovered a couple decades sooner if it would have changed the course of history there.

nobleach 3y ago

Hurd any day now, right? I do wonder what this landscape could have looked like if all of the effort had gone behind a Mach-based microkernel. I read all of the back and forth between Tanenbaum and Torvalds. At the time, I was just so excited to see "free and open" winning. I should specify that the XNU Kernel from Darwin/OSX took a lot of my attention when it first premiered.

Zambyte 3y ago
Hurd works in the same sense that OpenBSD works. It has very limited hardware support so you'll likely have to run it in a VM, but it does work.
- ElectricalUnion 3y ago
  If you're willing to split your workload into VMs in the first place I think application-level segmentation like Qubes starts to become a more interesting idea that microkernels.
  - Zambyte 3y ago
    There is a lot of flexibility that you get from microkernels outside of isolation that you don't get from virtual machines. I'm not suggesting use one GNU/Hurd VM for one application (similar to what you would get with Qubes). I'm suggesting using one GNU/Hurd VM for many applications.

dmpk2k 3y ago

This is true for server systems too. I've often had problems which were ultimately only solvable by rebooting large fleets of servers. Had the servers been running microkernels instead, updating services without full restarts would have been trivial in almost all cases. It's just a better approach overall. I curse the path dependency that led to the current situation.

Zambyte 3y ago
I consider servers to be human-facing systems. I more meant to account for the fact that L4 is used in Qualcomm modems and Minix is used for Intel ME. I would not consider either of those as human-facing.

ryao 3y ago

They might win in the long term. Linux is moving in a micro-kernel direction with things such as netmap, io_uring, DPDK and SPDK.