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BlueOS Kernel – Written in Rust, compatible with POSIX

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Re: BlueOS Kernel – Written in Rust, compatible with POSIX

#41

Post by pjmlp »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #25
notepad0x90 wrote: post #21

It would be neat if there was a standard interface for device drivers, similar to what POSIX does for user-space. That way, interesting kernels like this one can just comply with that and the enormous amounts of Linux modules can be ported to comply with that standard so that they can also be loaded by redox, blueos,etc.. But the complication I suppose is data-structures being accessed by drivers that reside in the c…

Yes, we really really need to do this. It would be what LLVM was for compiler frontends (and thus languages) starting 15-20 years ago: a Cambrian explosion enabler.

LLVM might be the most sucessful one, but it hardly the first of its kind.

Here one famous one from early 1980s, there others to read about, for anyone into compiler tooling history,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam_Compiler_Kit

Re: BlueOS Kernel – Written in Rust, compatible with POSIX

#42

Post by kllrnohj »

doublextremevil wrote: post #20
kllrnohj wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even harder to get an accurate picture of what Chinese companies are actually doing. Like the wiki page for Huawei's OS Next is pretty incredible. By which I mean, rather actually unbelievable. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS_NEXT They created a brand new microkernel with Linux ABI and driver support in containers? Or... did they just slightly fork Linux and pretend they invented it?

I think this comment is emblematic of a broader western trend underestimating recent Chinese technological development. It is understandable, given how backward they were for so long. The last five years though, things have really gotten crazy over there in terms of investment and progress.

Anyone claiming to have made a microkernel, seemingly quickly, with Linux ABI and driver compatibility while supposedly being 10-20% faster would also be getting the same amount of skepticism.

Especially if that was just one component of a supposedly entirely new OS that quickly replaced something decades established without regressing user experience or features

Re: BlueOS Kernel – Written in Rust, compatible with POSIX

#43

Post by pjmlp »

ladyanita22 wrote: post #36
kllrnohj wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even harder to get an accurate picture of what Chinese companies are actually doing. Like the wiki page for Huawei's OS Next is pretty incredible. By which I mean, rather actually unbelievable. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS_NEXT They created a brand new microkernel with Linux ABI and driver support in containers? Or... did they just slightly fork Linux and pretend they invented it?

Having used HarmonyOS, it feels totally like Android. Even the back buttom behavior and the app lifecycle feels the same. Some might argue that this is intentional, but to me, this more likely shows that HarmonyOS is just a hard fork of Android without sources released and, likely, with their own virtual machine implementation (ARK instead of ART).

It is more than that, because it uses neither Java nor Kotlin, the main programming language is inspired in Typescript, ArkTS.

Re: BlueOS Kernel – Written in Rust, compatible with POSIX

#44

Post by kllrnohj »

ladyanita22 wrote: post #36
kllrnohj wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even harder to get an accurate picture of what Chinese companies are actually doing. Like the wiki page for Huawei's OS Next is pretty incredible. By which I mean, rather actually unbelievable. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS_NEXT They created a brand new microkernel with Linux ABI and driver support in containers? Or... did they just slightly fork Linux and pretend they invented it?

Having used HarmonyOS, it feels totally like Android. Even the back buttom behavior and the app lifecycle feels the same. Some might argue that this is intentional, but to me, this more likely shows that HarmonyOS is just a hard fork of Android without sources released and, likely, with their own virtual machine implementation (ARK instead of ART).

Harmony OS 1-4 were openly Android-based. It's Harmony OS 5 that supposedly is this new thing. Which did you use?

Re: BlueOS Kernel – Written in Rust, compatible with POSIX

#45

Post by fragmede »

alisonatwork wrote: post #19
jorl17 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any resources (search engines, prompts, MCP, other tools) to help with this? I feel that it is quite obvious the next century will have China leading the pack, and I'd really like to be able to prepare for that.

I'm not sure what the parent poster is getting at about information on Chinese business, politics and culture being hard to find because that stuff is widely written about in the global media, and there are plenty of English language sources. It almost seems counterproductive to provide links to resources because it's artificially limiting what you will be exposed to, but here we go anyway... China Media Project (med…

Thank you for the link to V2ex.com!

Their comments section has

Please do not copy and paste AI-generated content when answering technical questions

on their footer.

Re: BlueOS Kernel – Written in Rust, compatible with POSIX

#46

Post by kllrnohj »

pjmlp wrote: post #43
ladyanita22 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having used HarmonyOS, it feels totally like Android. Even the back buttom behavior and the app lifecycle feels the same. Some might argue that this is intentional, but to me, this more likely shows that HarmonyOS is just a hard fork of Android without sources released and, likely, with their own virtual machine implementation (ARK instead of ART).

It is more than that, because it uses neither Java nor Kotlin, the main programming language is inspired in Typescript, ArkTS.

And yet https://developer.huawei.com/consumer/en/doc/harmonyos-guide...

Looks shockingly similar to Android Studio including the exact same program layout on the filesystem and SDK compatibility selection.

ArkTS itself looks new enough, but if it turns out to just be something like Flutter, running on an otherwise Android OS, that doesn't look like it would be surprising

Re: BlueOS Kernel – Written in Rust, compatible with POSIX

#47

Post by pjmlp »

kllrnohj wrote: post #46
pjmlp wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is more than that, because it uses neither Java nor Kotlin, the main programming language is inspired in Typescript, ArkTS.

And yet https://developer.huawei.com/consumer/en/doc/harmonyos-guide... Looks shockingly similar to Android Studio including the exact same program layout on the filesystem and SDK compatibility selection. ArkTS itself looks new enough, but if it turns out to just be something like Flutter, running on an otherwise Android OS, that doesn't look like it would be surprising

Not surprising, all embeded IDEs used to look like Eclipse CDT, nowadays they all look like VSCode forks, at least they aren't shipping yet another Chrome Platform Runtime based IDE.

And Flutter was initially based in React before adopting Dart, while Compose was Android's team response to the internal turf wars at Google.

It is to be expected that when forced to not use Android any longer due to politics, they would make a platform that eases the effort of developers with Android skills to transition to a new platform free of US politics.

Re: BlueOS Kernel – Written in Rust, compatible with POSIX

#49

Post by usamoi »

kllrnohj wrote: post #40
usamoi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They published a paper for it, which includes more details. https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi24/presentation/chen-h...

Wait, doesn't that also pretty obviously say it's not a microkernel at all? They use "class 1 mechanism-enforced isolation" which isn't address space space isolation per the paper, and thus they solved ipc performance by not having any ipc - it's monolithic

Well, it is clear that they have a new definition of a microkernel, since there are now more new technologies that achieve isolation without compromising performance. Microkernel vs monolithic kernel is more of a marketing rhetoric than technical differences.

Re: BlueOS Kernel – Written in Rust, compatible with POSIX

#50

Post by kllrnohj »

usamoi wrote: post #49
kllrnohj wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, doesn't that also pretty obviously say it's not a microkernel at all? They use "class 1 mechanism-enforced isolation" which isn't address space space isolation per the paper, and thus they solved ipc performance by not having any ipc - it's monolithic

Well, it is clear that they have a new definition of a microkernel, since there are now more new technologies that achieve isolation without compromising performance. Microkernel vs monolithic kernel is more of a marketing rhetoric than technical differences.

> Microkernel vs monolithic kernel is more of a marketing rhetoric than technical differences.

It's not, they have meanings and they can't just make up something different and pretend it's a microkernel when it isn't. That doesn't make it bad, it's just not what they are claiming. It also obviously isn't IPC, despite their continued use of the term throughout.

Also their isolation says it's ARM Watchpoint which is a debugger support? Maybe they are trapping unexpected address writes, but that isn't doing much for restricting privileges. It also lists Intel PKS, which Linux already supports/uses as well...

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