51–60 of 199 posts
> We find that almost all exploits are at least mitigated to less than critical severity, and 40% completely eliminated This probably sounds trollish, but security isn't that important. An OS architecture has to take into account other things too.
Linux is the most popular OS in the world (of course, counting Android), so I guess this means it doesn't really matter is monolithic is flawed, or it is not flawed enough.
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15642116
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15634014
So "${thing} is flawed" is not precise enough; an interesting statement would be "${thing} is not the best choice for ${conditions}". A monolithic OS is not the best choice for a high-reliability system on unreliable hardware. A microkernel OS that widely uses hardware memory protection is not the best choice for a controller with 4KB of RAM. A unikernel setup is not the best choice for a desktop system where the user is expected to constantly install new software. Etc, etc.
In other words, the ancient concept of "right tool for the job" still applies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A reasonably secure os? I think that's one thing I don't want just reasonable
It's kinda self-deprecating humor; the (now ex) Tor developers I know use it. Nothing is ever 100% secure.
I wonder if there exists a parallel dimension where linux is microkernel design and folks are pushing for monolothic citing the driver friendliness and performance
the Hurd-verse lives! Richard Stallman is a clean-shaven, foulmouthed autocrat, and Linus is composing folk songs about joining hands with Intel and Nvidia!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If parallel dimensions exist, then it's most certainly one of the closest dimensions to ours. If I'm sure of one thing, it's that as soon as we decided to build everything as Microkernels, we'd have the same squeaky wheels touting the massive benefits of Monotlithic OS design. We're hilariously cyclical in our preferences. "Think of all the runtime efficiencies of the shared memory, and how much easier it would be to…
The dirty secret is that we take a microkernel, rename the syscalls as "upcalls", throw in some hardware emulation code as a less efficient and uglier API for software that can't be bothered to be ported, and call it a hypervisor. Also, your phone's baseband processor almost certainly runs a microkernel, and likely so does your car.
It's quite crazy to count all the layers
cpu microcode
cpu isa
hypervisor
os kernel
userspace api
browser runtime
js vm
application
your mouse
Linux is the most popular OS in the world (of course, counting Android), so I guess this means it doesn't really matter is monolithic is flawed, or it is not flawed enough.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If parallel dimensions exist, then it's most certainly one of the closest dimensions to ours. If I'm sure of one thing, it's that as soon as we decided to build everything as Microkernels, we'd have the same squeaky wheels touting the massive benefits of Monotlithic OS design. We're hilariously cyclical in our preferences. "Think of all the runtime efficiencies of the shared memory, and how much easier it would be to…
The dirty secret is that we take a microkernel, rename the syscalls as "upcalls", throw in some hardware emulation code as a less efficient and uglier API for software that can't be bothered to be ported, and call it a hypervisor. Also, your phone's baseband processor almost certainly runs a microkernel, and likely so does your car.
https://source.android.com/devices/architecture/kernel/modul...
https://source.android.com/devices/architecture/hidl/
So everyone running Android Oreo or newer on their phones, not only has a microkernel on their basebase radio, they also have a Linux tamed into a microkernel on their main ARM SOC.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like a pretty easy cost/benefit analysis to me: I can either spend thousands of dollars worth of my time on updating the driver, or I can pay someone else thousands of dollars to do it. Or I can spend a fraction of that on a new video card. Seems like the only solution for Vista users is the only solution I'd ever have gone with, anyway.
Sure the cost/benefit works out the same for you (which is why no one has done the work), but that's different from the full set of options available to you in both cases.
I tend to fall on the side of the root poster - if having a stable driver API means Linux gets more commercial driver support, then that's the one that has the highest cost/benefit in my book.
In practical terms, being able to hack on open-source drivers isn't particularly useful to me, but having an easier user experience with Linux on the desktop (and, more generally, having Linux on the desktop be something more than an also-ran) would benefit me immensely.