Hi, On Monday, 22 June 2020 16:22:23 EEST Ro Ba wrote: > I just wanted someone to notice this: > > https://github.com/remysaissy/examour-exokernel > > From what I understood It's an attempt to a GNU exokernel. Exokernel is a good idea on the paper while you're on the coast. However, it has a quite specific use-cases (and those use-cases excludes desktop/server use). Microkernel is a far more better fits for the generic desktop/server/'embedded (not PIC)' use cases. > > I don't know how to experiment it being just an end-user, but someone could > find it interesting and maybe continue the development. What I'm actually seen is a barebone for the kernel (not completed by the way) and a few libs/drivers code. From my point of view - there are far more better abadoned projects to start with. Anyway there is no value there. > > I like the idea of direct-to-hardware performance and the security an > exokernel is claimed to have regarding the kernel calls. Direct to hardware access and security aren't a good friends anyway. Going further - if you want to provide a direct generalized access to the hardware (i.e. an access to a storage media via memory mapping) then your exokernel will contain the *all* of specific hardware drivers. And this is actually implemented (not in this particular way, but is a too close - I guess you're able to map media storage space via memory mapping calls) in any of the monolithic kernels (indeed, you're getting a layers of abstractions additionally). Falling back to the security - it's not so simple like it sounds, in most of the cases restrictions are going not to the particular hardware, but to the stuff this hardware provides i.e. TCP ports provided via tcp/ip stack works with networking hardware. This is also applicable for the media storage - usually restrictions are going to the specific region of media (that's where filesystems coming into place). > > Hope to see in the future a way to choose between micro/monolithic/exo > kernel, talking about GNU and Linux distributions. Those systems are quite different between each other to make this choice easy. For example a libc will looks different. Sure, it's still possible to have nearly the same set of user applications, but the system libraries, daemons etc will be completely different.
Thanks, have a nice day.
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