Re: Sparc port?

[Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS <edmundo@rano.demon.co.uk>]

Gordon Matzigkeit:

> Grabbing existing Linux features sounds like a nice idea, but frankly,
> I'm shocked at how quickly people like OKUJI Yoshinori and friends are
> improving GNU Mach.  As Thomas put it, Mach and the Hurd is basically
> reusing most of the Linux kernel code, it's just organized a bit
> differently. ;)

But, am I right in thinking that in both cases the device drivers are
part of the kernel, so a buggy device driver can crash the kernel?

If one were starting now, would the L4 ABI be the best choice of
microkernel interface, in your opinion?

I find it quite impressive that they ran Linux on top of (the original
non-free) L4 with only a 5% loss of speed.

Does Fiasco already provide enough of L4 functionality
(http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/fiasco/status.html) to support the Hurd?

> [BTW, part of my reasoning stems from a discussion I had with a
> certain top-ranked Linux kernel developer who made it clear that,
> though he/she wouldn't wish death on anybody, microkernel features
> would probably never make it into the official Linux distribution,
> especially if they were only useful to the Hurd, so we'd have to
> develop our own fork.]

Then there would be no point, of course. You might as well adapt device
driver updates between Linux to GNU Mach as between two Linux forks.

By the way, isn't Linus's employer Transmeta, according to some
rumours, working on the sort of multimedia stuff that is likely to
require a real-time operating system, which usually means a microkernel
...?

Edmund