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Unikernels: The Next Stage of Linux's Dominance [pdf]

cs.bu.edu

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Re: Unikernels: The Next Stage of Linux's Dominance [pdf]

#5

Post by enriquto »

ch_123 wrote: post #2

Is there any way I can read this if I don't have an ACM subscription?

In this case the authors themselves put the pdf on their website.

In the general case, you can almost always download the article from scihub by searching for the DOI of the publication.

Re: Unikernels: The Next Stage of Linux's Dominance [pdf]

#6

Post by beefhash »

enriquto wrote: post #5
ch_123 wrote: post #2

Is there any way I can read this if I don't have an ACM subscription?

In this case the authors themselves put the pdf on their website. In the general case, you can almost always download the article from scihub by searching for the DOI of the publication.

> In this case the authors themselves put the pdf on their website.

OT: This should honestly be a criminal offense, at least if done before a year passes. The publisher does valuable work in vetting contributions and checking the paper before publishing. They shouldn't be cheated out of their fair share of money that comes with due process just because authors go rogue.

Re: Unikernels: The Next Stage of Linux's Dominance [pdf]

#7

Post by squarefoot »

The article is Tl;Wbmloc;Dr (too long, way beyond my level of comprehension, didn't read), so forgive any stupid questions. Could the unikernel technology be used to build extremely small Linux distros that contain just the bare minimum to satisfy all dependencies for running say a single software or a small group of them. I'm not interested in virtual machines for network related services but rather in small embedded systems where the user might need to use just one single application for the entire board lifetime. Security wouldn't be a concern there, assuming the user already has complete access to the hardware, that layer could be moved outside of the box by inspecting and firewalling the network traffic.

If yes, does anyone know if there is/will be any automated way say to analyze a software, example: a .deb package containing an user software, then build a list of dependencies and create a bootable image for the requested architecture which will run just that software?

Re: Unikernels: The Next Stage of Linux's Dominance [pdf]

#9

Post by c0l0 »

rapsey wrote: post #3

> Unikernels have demonstrated enormous advantages over Linux in many important domains, causing some to propose that the days of Linux's dominance may be coming to an end. Where are unikernels widely used?

I don't think that this statement describes the reality we live in.

To me, unikernels feel quite a bit like statically linked server binaries running under an unprivileged UID - but you're choosing not to trust Linux' (or any other kernel's) user separation facilities, but your hypervisor's domU separation facilities instead. In exchange, you lose virtually all of your existing OS's amazing debugging and performance analysis/tuning tools. It's not a tradeoff I'd readily consider.

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