• Vilian@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    nah, you can have micro-kernel features on linux, but you can’t have monolithc kernel features on microkernel, there’s zero arguments in favor of a micro kernel, except being a novel project

    • ORLY.

      Do explain how you can have micro kernel features on Linux. Explain, please, how I can kill the filesystem module and restart it when it bugs out, and how I can prevent hard kernel crashes when a bug in a kernel module causes a lock-up. I’m really interested in hearing how I can upgrade a kernel module with a patch without forcing a reboot; that’d really help on Arch, where minor, patch-level kernel updates force reboots multiple times a week (without locking me into an -lts kernel that isn’t getting security patches).

      I’d love to hear how monolithic kernels have solved these.

      • frezik@midwest.social
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        4 months ago

        I’ve been hoping that we can sneak more and more things into userspace on Linux. Then, one day, Linus will wake up and discover he’s accidentally made a microkernel.

      • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        I thought the point of lts kernels is they still get patches despite being old.

        Other than that though you’re right on the money. I think they don’t know what the characteristics of a microkernel are. I think they mean that a microkernel can’t have all the features of a monolithic kernel, what they fail to realise is that might actually be a good thing.

        • I thought the point of lts kernels is they still get patches despite being old.

          Well, yeah, you’re right. My shameful admission is that I’m not using LTS because I wanted to play with bcachefs and it’s not in LTS. Maybe there’s a package for LTS now that’d let me at it, but, still. It’s a bad excuse, but there you go.

          I think a lot of people also don’t realize that most of the performance issues have been worked around, and if RedoxOS is paying attention to advances in the microkernel field and is not trying to solve every problem in isolation, they could end up with close to monolithic kernel performance. Certainly close to Windows performance, and that seems good enough for Industry.

          I don’t think microkernels will ever compete in the HPC field, but I highly doubt anyone complaining about the performance penalty of microkernel architecture would actual notice a difference.

          • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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            4 months ago

            Windows is a hybrid kernel, and has some interesting layers of abstraction, all of which make it slower. It’s also full of junkware these days. So beating it shouldn’t be that hard.

            Yeah to be fair in HPC it’s probably easier to just setup a watchdog and reboot that node in case of issues. No need for the extra resilience.