An alternative TTY layer

Posted Apr 27, 2017 21:13 UTC (Thu) by mm7323 (subscriber, #87386)
Parent article: An alternative TTY layer

So Pitre honourably strives to make new mini implementations of various Linux subsystems with the goal of shrinking the kernel to work on tiny IoT devices.

Isn't the logical conclusion of such work essentially a _new_ kernel with some interfaces compatible with the Linux kernel (syscall, drivers, netlink etc...).

Wouldn't it be better to take an existing hardened RTOS or small kernel and add Linux interface compatibility? Doesn't this just point to the unsuitability of the Linux kernel to tiny IoT devices?

An alternative TTY layer

Posted Apr 27, 2017 22:19 UTC (Thu) by jkingweb (subscriber, #113039) [Link] (1 responses)

> Isn't the logical conclusion of such work essentially a _new_ kernel with some interfaces compatible with the Linux kernel (syscall, drivers, netlink etc...).

That's certainly what it sounds like to me. I don't see how you you benefit from active maintenance of the kernel if you throw huge chunks of it away.

An alternative TTY layer

Posted Apr 27, 2017 22:54 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

It's not all-or-nothing. For example, you might want a couple of full-scale feature-rich subsystems and to get them you just need to throw a switch in the config file. With a separate OS you'll have to actually reimplement the full-scale systems (with all the resulting bugs and issues).

An alternative TTY layer

Posted Apr 28, 2017 11:41 UTC (Fri) by roblucid (guest, #48964) [Link] (1 responses)

That is IMHO sophistry. The same argument for an emulation layer, could have been used in the 90's for multi-cpu large memory systems. Who runs Minix now? Linux would have been a dead end, without scaling efforts, even in mobile phones.

In the long run, who knows what parts of the kernel will become irrelevant in some deployments?

Many people may not see tinification effort benefits, but making software more adaptable opens up new possibilities and can drive growth as it's deployed more widely, as well as enhancing survival characteristics.

An alternative TTY layer

Posted Apr 29, 2017 17:26 UTC (Sat) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

>Who runs Minix now?
Intel's hardware spyware runs on it, supposedly: https://mail.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/2017-April/0...

An alternative TTY layer

Posted Apr 30, 2017 9:04 UTC (Sun) by linusw (subscriber, #40300) [Link]

I think the ambition is to reuse the major parts, especially all device drivers, MMU and other arch code and the system call interface and just shrink down the subsystems that actually are just too bloated.

Of course it is possible to fork, or maintain a separate kernel, but history tell us it is not a good idea.