Do explain how you can have micro kernel features on Linux. Explain, please, how I can kill the filesystem module and restart it when it bugs out, and how I can prevent hard kernel crashes when a bug in a kernel module causes a lock-up. I’m really interested in hearing how I can upgrade a kernel module with a patch without forcing a reboot; that’d really help on Arch, where minor, patch-level kernel updates force reboots multiple times a week (without locking me into an -lts kernel that isn’t getting security patches).
I’d love to hear how monolithic kernels have solved these.
I thought the point of lts kernels is they still get patches despite being old.
Other than that though you’re right on the money. I think they don’t know what the characteristics of a microkernel are. I think they mean that a microkernel can’t have all the features of a monolithic kernel, what they fail to realise is that might actually be a good thing.
I thought the point of lts kernels is they still get patches despite being old.
Well, yeah, you’re right. My shameful admission is that I’m not using LTS because I wanted to play with bcachefs and it’s not in LTS. Maybe there’s a package for LTS now that’d let me at it, but, still. It’s a bad excuse, but there you go.
I think a lot of people also don’t realize that most of the performance issues have been worked around, and if RedoxOS is paying attention to advances in the microkernel field and is not trying to solve every problem in isolation, they could end up with close to monolithic kernel performance. Certainly close to Windows performance, and that seems good enough for Industry.
I don’t think microkernels will ever compete in the HPC field, but I highly doubt anyone complaining about the performance penalty of microkernel architecture would actual notice a difference.
Windows is a hybrid kernel, and has some interesting layers of abstraction, all of which make it slower. It’s also full of junkware these days. So beating it shouldn’t be that hard.
Yeah to be fair in HPC it’s probably easier to just setup a watchdog and reboot that node in case of issues. No need for the extra resilience.
That’s my point. If you’re l33t gaming, what matters is your GPU anyway. If HPC, sure, use whatever architecture gets you the most bang for your buck, which is probably going to be a monolithic kernel (but, maybe not - nanokernels allow processes basically direct access to hardware, with minimal abstraction, like X11 DRI, and might allow even faster solutions to be programmed). For most people, the slight improvement in performance of a monolithic kernel over a modern, optimized microkernel design will probably not be noticeable.
I keep getting people telling me monolithic kernels are way faster, dude, but most are just parroting the state of things decades ago and are ignoring many of the advancements micro kernels like L4 have made in intervening years. But I need to go find links and put together references before I counter-claim, and right now I have other things I’d rather be doing.
And I was agreeing with you! I was leaning on your sympathetic shoulder, while I suffered the slings and arrows of outrageously misinformed miscreants, and commiserating to your compatriotic ear.
you don’t need a micro kernel to install medules, nor to make a crash in certain module don’t bring the kernel down, you program it isolated, they don’t do that now because it’s unecessary, but android do that, and there’s work being doing in that way
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-Rust-Scheduler-Micro
the thing is that it’s harder todo that, that’s why no one does, but not impossible, you also need to give the kernel the foundation to support that
I’ve been hoping that we can sneak more and more things into userspace on Linux. Then, one day, Linus will wake up and discover he’s accidentally made a microkernel.
ORLY.
Do explain how you can have micro kernel features on Linux. Explain, please, how I can kill the filesystem module and restart it when it bugs out, and how I can prevent hard kernel crashes when a bug in a kernel module causes a lock-up. I’m really interested in hearing how I can upgrade a kernel module with a patch without forcing a reboot; that’d really help on Arch, where minor, patch-level kernel updates force reboots multiple times a week (without locking me into an -lts kernel that isn’t getting security patches).
I’d love to hear how monolithic kernels have solved these.
I thought the point of lts kernels is they still get patches despite being old.
Other than that though you’re right on the money. I think they don’t know what the characteristics of a microkernel are. I think they mean that a microkernel can’t have all the features of a monolithic kernel, what they fail to realise is that might actually be a good thing.
Well, yeah, you’re right. My shameful admission is that I’m not using LTS because I wanted to play with bcachefs and it’s not in LTS. Maybe there’s a package for LTS now that’d let me at it, but, still. It’s a bad excuse, but there you go.
I think a lot of people also don’t realize that most of the performance issues have been worked around, and if RedoxOS is paying attention to advances in the microkernel field and is not trying to solve every problem in isolation, they could end up with close to monolithic kernel performance. Certainly close to Windows performance, and that seems good enough for Industry.
I don’t think microkernels will ever compete in the HPC field, but I highly doubt anyone complaining about the performance penalty of microkernel architecture would actual notice a difference.
Windows is a hybrid kernel, and has some interesting layers of abstraction, all of which make it slower. It’s also full of junkware these days. So beating it shouldn’t be that hard.
Yeah to be fair in HPC it’s probably easier to just setup a watchdog and reboot that node in case of issues. No need for the extra resilience.
That’s my point. If you’re l33t gaming, what matters is your GPU anyway. If HPC, sure, use whatever architecture gets you the most bang for your buck, which is probably going to be a monolithic kernel (but, maybe not - nanokernels allow processes basically direct access to hardware, with minimal abstraction, like X11 DRI, and might allow even faster solutions to be programmed). For most people, the slight improvement in performance of a monolithic kernel over a modern, optimized microkernel design will probably not be noticeable.
I keep getting people telling me monolithic kernels are way faster, dude, but most are just parroting the state of things decades ago and are ignoring many of the advancements micro kernels like L4 have made in intervening years. But I need to go find links and put together references before I counter-claim, and right now I have other things I’d rather be doing.
I wasn’t making a counter claim. I was agreeing with you. Like what?
And I was agreeing with you! I was leaning on your sympathetic shoulder, while I suffered the slings and arrows of outrageously misinformed miscreants, and commiserating to your compatriotic ear.
you don’t need a micro kernel to install medules, nor to make a crash in certain module don’t bring the kernel down, you program it isolated, they don’t do that now because it’s unecessary, but android do that, and there’s work being doing in that way https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-Rust-Scheduler-Micro
the thing is that it’s harder todo that, that’s why no one does, but not impossible, you also need to give the kernel the foundation to support that
Fun fact: Android’s next Kernel, Fuchsia, is a microkernel. So even Google acknowledges the superiority of microkernels.
I’ve been hoping that we can sneak more and more things into userspace on Linux. Then, one day, Linus will wake up and discover he’s accidentally made a microkernel.