Show HN: A Go unikernel capable of running GUI programs

#1

Post by eliasnaur » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 6:44 PM UTC

Show HN: A Go unikernel capable of running GUI programs
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Re: Show HN: A Go unikernel capable of running GUI programs

#2

Post by klysm » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 2:49 AM UTC

Repo is here: https://git.sr.ht/~eliasnaur/unik

Some key points from the article:

> Unik pretends to be a Linux kernel, implementing enough system calls to fool the Go runtime.

> The gui program is run with https://gioui.org/

I could see this being useful to write GUI apps that need to run on tiny hardware to reduce the footprint, but the real sweet spot for unikernels I think is backend services. Cool project though!

Re: Show HN: A Go unikernel capable of running GUI programs

#3

Post by meddlepal » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 4:14 AM UTC

Absolutely terrible naming collision with another Go Unikernel project:

https://github.com/solo-io/unik

Re: Show HN: A Go unikernel capable of running GUI programs

#4

Post by lainga » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 4:45 AM UTC

meddlepal wrote: post #3

Absolutely terrible naming collision with another Go Unikernel project: https://github.com/solo-io/unik

As is the idiomatic Go style

Re: Show HN: A Go unikernel capable of running GUI programs

#5

Post by amscanne » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 6:18 AM UTC

Super cool!

One question: why a UEFI boot loader? QEMU and others have mechanisms that support direct loading of an ELF binary. Was the original thinking to support bare metal? (Or maybe it's still in the cards?)

Re: Show HN: A Go unikernel capable of running GUI programs

#6

Post by TACIXAT » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 6:37 AM UTC

meddlepal wrote: post #3

Absolutely terrible naming collision with another Go Unikernel project: https://github.com/solo-io/unik

It is just a naming collision, not sure you need the superlative and adjective to point it out.

Re: Show HN: A Go unikernel capable of running GUI programs

#7

Post by eliasnaur » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 6:53 AM UTC

amscanne wrote: post #5

Super cool! One question: why a UEFI boot loader? QEMU and others have mechanisms that support direct loading of an ELF binary. Was the original thinking to support bare metal? (Or maybe it's still in the cards?)

It happened by accident. Originally I wanted to run on bare-metal, and thought UEFI would be a good starting point. THen I never got around to adding multiboot and similar support.

Re: Show HN: A Go unikernel capable of running GUI programs

#8

Post by pjmlp » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 7:59 AM UTC

klysm wrote: post #2

Repo is here: https://git.sr.ht/~eliasnaur/unik Some key points from the article: > Unik pretends to be a Linux kernel, implementing enough system calls to fool the Go runtime. > The gui program is run with https://gioui.org/ I could see this being useful to write GUI apps that need to run on tiny hardware to reduce the footprint, but the real sweet spot for unikernels I think is backend services. Cool project though…

Another alternative for bare metal Go is TamaGo, developed by F-Secure for their USB armory pen.

https://labs.f-secure.com/blog/tamago/

Re: Show HN: A Go unikernel capable of running GUI programs

#9

Post by jbverschoor » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 8:03 AM UTC

I was just looking for something similar last week. Cool work.

Re: Show HN: A Go unikernel capable of running GUI programs

#10

Post by Semaphor » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 8:05 AM UTC

TACIXAT wrote: post #6

meddlepal wrote: post #3

Absolutely terrible naming collision with another Go Unikernel project: https://github.com/solo-io/unik

It is just a naming collision, not sure you need the superlative and adjective to point it out.

isotope (the JS layout library) and isotope.js (the JS view library) are arguably a naming collision despite having slightly different names. I feel like two projects having exactly the same name can have a qualifier to their collision added.