On 10/11/2014 12:49 PM, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
On Sb, 11 oct 14, 12:19:29, Marty wrote:>Could it be that a modular design for such complex tasks becomes too >difficult to *do it right*? I don't know, but I think given its history, the burden of proof is on monolithic, not modular design. A better question may be whether adistributed volunteer project can do real system architecture? (Where isCERN when you need them?)Who's history, Linux' (the kernel)? :pI was thinking of Windows, but opened Pandora's box instead. :/Couldn't it be that the fact that so many are embracing the "monolithic" design of systemd is a sign that the modular design was... suboptimal and nobody came up with a better one?
Umm..... no. In fact the leading edge is going in the other direction. Examples:
1. smartos (smartos.com) - latest and greatest out of opensolaris land (lean hypervisor - just enough os to run docker containers)
2. unikernels like mirage (http://www.openmirage.org/) - lean hypervisor layer to manage machine resources, then each application context is essentially a container with o/s like functions compiled in as libraries - os functions as modular libraries, just use those that are needed
3. virtual machine environments that run directly on a thin hypervisor - Erlang on Xen comes to mind (http://erlangonxen.org/)
4. And there are also attempts to run virtual machines on bare iron http://kerlnel.org/ (Erlang on bare iron) - and multiple projects that run Java virtual machines on bare iron
Arguably, the hypervisor layer is monolithic, but we're talking a very targeted set of functions that are a subset of kernel functions.
Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra