51–60 of 149 posts
- XNU was born from a fork of the Mach microkernel
- When the microkernel hype simmered down due to them being way too slow for '90s machines, NeXT bolted on lots of chunks taken from BSD to speed up XNU
- After 20+ years, computers are fast enough to run true microkernels, so Apple is bringing them back again
So it's finally time for microkernels to shine again?
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The entire "ring 1" thing is highly likely false. It's been decades since I last saw anyone using the x86 ring levels and I seriously doubt XNU is using them. In any case, extensions run in the same address space as the rest of the kernel making any such "rings" pointless.
Rings 1 and 2 don't even exist on AMD64/x86-64.
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What a sensible world we live on nowadays, that wasn't name calling in any sense. From all purposes from a third party driver writer persona, the only path forward are user space drivers. What you call a kernel like that?
> What a sensible world we live on nowadays This is basically calling me silly, just as you were calling the previous person ideological and a pedant. If you cut out this commentary that would be great.
I hope this won't effect tools like "Karabiner Elements"[1]? It's an essential tool I use to re-program the whole keyboard. [1] https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/
Yeah, definitely going to be problematic if that happens.
I don't know what happened there... Apple used to make wonderful keyboards, but it seems like every model they make now just plain sucks.
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"Pedantic"? If you just consider disallowing 3rd party modules to be a "microkernel" all while the kernel itself still loads most if not all (approved) drivers such as PCI bus, storage devices or filesystems in the same address space, then _all_ current major operating systems are "microkernels".
From all pratical purposes for a third party driver writer persona, the only path forward are user space drivers. What you call a kernel like that?
Locked?
"A kernel that only allows user-space third party drivers"?
That this style doesn't have a nifty name isn't a good reason to weaken the established definition of microkernel just so it does.
It's really sad that we have come to this. The platform became more and more closed off in the name of security and no serious law or regulation is preventing that.
And if at least it was bug free it would be worth it, maybe. But my kernel extensions are all for circumventing bugs or stuff that does not work properly, e.g. Karabiner for remapping the ctrl character of my keyboard to command, necessarily since I work with a lot of OSes at a time.
systemextensionsctl list yields 0 extensions on my system. Are there any users of these extensions at this point? It does seem a bit weird that installing these extensions supposedly doesn't require any user consent, even though stuff like screen recording or folder access does.
% systemextensionsctl list
1 extension(s)
--- com.apple.system_extension.network_extension
enabled active teamID bundleID (version) name [state]
* * MLZF7K7B5R at.obdev.littlesnitch.networkextension (5.2.2/6209) Little Snitch Network Extension [activated enabled]You can still find the official documents about how to make changes in the MacOS X kernel itself (dated 2004 or so...). It's really sad that we have come to this. The platform became more and more closed off in the name of security and no serious law or regulation is preventing that. And if at least it was bug free it would be worth it, maybe. But my kernel extensions are all for circumventing bugs or stuff that does…
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The roadmap as presented by Apple at WWDC 2019 was that after an userspace replacement for a kernel subsystem gets presented, there is one year deprecation until it gets removed from the kernel on the following OS release. So there is one year to try out what might still be missing and give respective feedback. The long term roadmap is that macOS will eventually be much more microkernel like.
I am quite sure that we have been other this several times in HN. The fact that they're no longer going to allow loading of 3rd party kernel modules (a pure political decision) does not a make a microkernel (which is an architectural style). The kernel is still going to be big and monolithic (it contains the entire BSD kernel in the same address space!), and they're still going to be loading Apple-authorized kernel m…
macOS does not use “the” BSD kernel (it’s not even obvious what your assertion even means since there are many members of the BSD family, each with their own kernel - none of which macOS uses).
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Yeah, definitely going to be problematic if that happens.
For sure. That would mean I couldn't use a decent keyboard, and that's gonna be a show-stopper. I don't know what happened there... Apple used to make wonderful keyboards, but it seems like every model they make now just plain sucks.