21–30 of 132 posts
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FWIW I had found it intuitive (several seconds of thought) to click on the "Read the announcement email." link, which contains the link to the ISO images.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Linux is not a microkernel, whether you compile it with modules or as one file. In a microkernel, the various modules run as separate processes rather than as part of the kernel. For example, if your network driver crashes, your kernel keeps running. Whereas in a monolithic kernel, a driver crashing crashes the whole kernel.
It's not quite that black/white, because drivers in Linux can and do crash without bringing down the whole system. I don't really know the technical details on how this works exactly, but I've seen drivers crash while the system remained running.
As I see it a micro kernel has simply a narrower definition of what should be in "kernel land" and what should be in "user land".
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> really shows how irrelevant the GNU foundation (and even the FSF) have become I've seen several posts here in the last month about proprietary software being used to basically exploit the users: steeply increase fees, hold files ransom (upgrade for money or loose access to files), spying on users. My conclusion is very different from yours: GNU Foundation and FSF are very relevant! They seem to lack in the PR dept,…
Now whether the organizations are actually doing a good job on that front is more questionable.
This micro kernel vs. monolithic kernel still puzzles me. From a computer science perspective micro kernels make so much sense. But when I compiled the Linux kernel, I was always baking everything into one file. It seemed much more practical to do so.
Reality beats theory every day of the week. Communication and isolation is never free.
> But when I compiled the Linux kernel, I was always baking everything into one file. It seemed much more practical to do so.
Whether it has modules or not have no bearing on whether kernel is monolithic or not
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Linux is not a microkernel, whether you compile it with modules or as one file. In a microkernel, the various modules run as separate processes rather than as part of the kernel. For example, if your network driver crashes, your kernel keeps running. Whereas in a monolithic kernel, a driver crashing crashes the whole kernel.
It's not quite that black/white, because drivers in Linux can and do crash without bringing down the whole system. I don't really know the technical details on how this works exactly, but I've seen drivers crash while the system remained running.
The fact that driver bug in theory could overwrite any other part of the kernel is what makes it monolithic.
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> really shows how irrelevant the GNU foundation (and even the FSF) have become I've seen several posts here in the last month about proprietary software being used to basically exploit the users: steeply increase fees, hold files ransom (upgrade for money or loose access to files), spying on users. My conclusion is very different from yours: GNU Foundation and FSF are very relevant! They seem to lack in the PR dept,…
It's not really about "proprietary vs. free software", it whether the FSF and GNU are still a driving force for Free Software. And to me this seems ... not really? They're still trying to create their anno-1985 Unix replacement. That's great and all, but also not really driving anything forward.
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It’s a big, hairy project that is not easily reduced to a simple feature list. Also consider the audience. This project is not meant to attract us hipsters.
I found your conclusion a bit unfounded.
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> really shows how irrelevant the GNU foundation (and even the FSF) have become I've seen several posts here in the last month about proprietary software being used to basically exploit the users: steeply increase fees, hold files ransom (upgrade for money or loose access to files), spying on users. My conclusion is very different from yours: GNU Foundation and FSF are very relevant! They seem to lack in the PR dept,…
In an era of insane surveillance, AI technology, mass corporate insanity, the FSF is still arguing about firmware blobs on hardware vs loaded in by the OS, or advocating for switching from .docx to .odt when the world has moved on from even having document files.
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Generalising this to GNU and the FSF is daft. Claiming this somehow shows their irrelevance is even more so.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not quite that black/white, because drivers in Linux can and do crash without bringing down the whole system. I don't really know the technical details on how this works exactly, but I've seen drivers crash while the system remained running.
Yeah but fact a part can crash without bringing rest down doesn't make it non-monolithic. The fact that driver bug in theory could overwrite any other part of the kernel is what makes it monolithic.