I had to look and skim to re-familiarize myself with SeL4. It's and older project that really never made it, from just a quick glance. It seems to basis or at least inspirational to more modern kernels. From the wiki, that seems to include Redox. I couldn't find much about sculpt, but it was submitted to distrowatch in 2018 and is still under the "not ready" section of their waiting list. I don't think there is really any usable FOSS OS using a microkernel. Last I remember reading, the ones most in use are highly specialized commercial projects. As far as I know Redox was the closest but it really hasn't been really actively developed (again, correct me if wrong). It hasn't been abandoned i.e. there seems to be development, but it's a long way from an end user OS at this point, from what I remember reading and no big strides have been made (again, maybe wrong)
You know? Depending on the hardware you have, you could download a bootable image of Genode, put it on a USB-keychain, and 'sculpt' it from there, in 'live' mode, without touching whatever you have installed on that system. Some, or even most people developing it using it as their daily driver. By means of a ported Virtual Box, and running anything mot covered under that.
I'm not using it more, because I didn't want to touch my installation, because it flies like a mad bat out of hell :-)
But having a look, clicking around, while having the documentation available, trying things, enjoying it, can be done easily by live-booting it from USB.
I'm sorry for the late reply, but I wanted to thank you for the reply. I did a quick scan of genode on wikipedia. I've heard of it and might have seen articles over the years, but it says it's a framework and it kinda says it was built for study. You kind of hit on my point. Microkernels have been around for many years, but there has never really been enough resources put in to make them viable for general desktop use, except for Minx but that was proprietary. From what I read, it wasn't made open source until too late.
Either to boot them in 'live-mode' on bare metal without touching your installation, or put them in QEMU to test-drive them there.
Maybe skim https://genodians.org/ too, or if you've got the time watching others doing that (instead of yourself) there in reverse chronological order:
I could be wrong, but I get the impression your younger than I am by a good bit. I'm an aging genx'r. My excitement/energy is lower than what it was. As I've aged, I feel like I don't have as much time, and I know I don't have the energy I used to. I wouldn't mind putting it in qemu, but if the drivers aren't there, bare metal is out for me.
On another note, I'm still trying to figure out the right balance in a home environment for direct hardware vs virtualization. I have taken classes, but they mostly talk about production environments. Many, don't even mention bare metal. I did read something on here recently, about minimal code and that was interesting. I've never been an expert, but I've enjoyed linux for quite a while. I wan't an early adopter but found it about 2008 and never went back. I never got used to snap/flatpacks/appimages but I know there is a place for them. My problem was that it made the old admin commands much less useful. 'mount' had too much mess. I know there is grep -v but you shouldn't have to do tons of that when trying to get an overview. top/htop are good but now there are tons of threads. So even when using tree view, it's harder to see. Not to mention, the ones I've tried, often lack features or features that don't work in the image form. I've studied lots of stuff, some at work, and some at home. I like to think I've forgotten more than some linux users ;P of course that doesn't apply to everyone. There have always been smarter people that know much much more. That's why I like to ask here. I really don't like videos as much; I prefer reading. Sometimes videos do help me but to me, they are much more time consuming, than reading and sometimes I watch half a vid before realizing it doesn't have what I was looking for. Right now, I need to study and use LLVMs a bit. I'm very late to that party. If nothing else, for searching the internet. Search engines just don't work well anymore. I have lots I want to do and work-on, if there was a large movement towards the microkernel, I definitely would want to move to that, but I just don't think it's there yet. Still, if time, I'll play with something. Redox, seemed to be full of great ideas, but I think it's stalled. When time, I'll try to look more at genode and I do appreciate the links. The trouble is, for me, I've read about many interesting projects that just never really come to fruition. I know resources is a huge problem. For years I've had the impression that unlike the olden days, where one programmer could change everything e.g. Linus, Stallman, and scores of others I don't know offhand. One person is no longer enough to change the world in this area, well with the exception of billionaires, like the guy behind Ubuntu. Even if your not a fan, it did change the landscape. Of course, the guy that did Redox, came really close, from my reading. If it was finished withing a few years, I think it would have. Maybe it still will. They list about a hundred developers. In contrast, I think the linux kernel has a couple thousand, but that's from a quick search. That's just the kernel, not a kernel, full OS with tools. Anyway, again, I appreciate it but for now, I need to work on some other stuff today :)
I know I didn't mention containers or VMs but again, not sure where the balance is, for me. I've thought about using Qube OS but I don't know where or if it's right for me. I tried IBMs VOID OS, and it was a pain for me. Again functionality and configuration. Not to be confused with Linux Void, which is really my favorite OS, but I'm not on it now because I have less time now than I did and it did still require more effort than Ubuntu or Mint. When I get time, I'll either go back to void, or do something else with my systems. Ubuntu is really kind of went to our way or the highway with the snap mess. Gentoo was also a great OS. I tend to really like Portage Systems, when they work. It can be a real pain, when they don't. Freebsd was good but never really desktop friendly. That might have changed but there where always issues with basic desktop programs when I used it, years ago e.g. LibreOffice and such. It seems to me, it was a case of devs not using it on the desktop. From the forum, the devs mainly used mac, and maybe freebsd on a server which it was perfect for, but the desktop ports seemed to be broken often.
Anyway, if your younger than I, am enjoy it and exploring. It is/was fun for me. I used to go to my states Linux Fest every year. I also used to get Linux Journal before it died. I miss that magazine ;)
Me fell into the chaos of this world in the summer of 1969 :-)
I can understand the lack/loss of enthusiasm for trying things out.
It's just that I'm not that much constrained by time, or other things stressing me out, even if I have the time.
Or not having enough hardware to try things out, without compromising my daily drivers.
I just need to watch out for balance between physical activity and morphing into a hunchbacked nerd from being online so much :)
Regarding Genode, and daily driving, I'm not doing that ATM, though it blew my mind.
I can imagine using it as something like a very lightweight Qubes by means of bundling applications into Unikernels like NetBSDs RUMP, Unikraft, Googles Distroless, or even most minimal Alpine. And 'sculpting' their capabilities from Genode.
But that's a hassle. But maybe not more so than how it is done now in general. And probably way more secure.
How it really performs fully loaded over time remains to be seen, and I haven't done that, yet.
Anyways, I just nagged you with that thing because I have the feeling people don't know this, while talking about exactly the things it could enable, and wouldn't it be nice to have something like that? :)
Or IF they know it, only from reading/talking about it, which is not the same as having seen it in action, and playing around :)
Hmm - don't remember if it was micro-kernel, but AtheOS (1) was a REALLY nice OS developed by a single very talented developer. It included display server, networking, partial POSIX compliance and lots of goodies like GCC, Bash, etc. Haiku moved to using the Linux Kernel if IIRC and AtheOS itself seems to have vanished...
from what I've heard - sculpt is pretty close to 'daily driver' territory, and genode is used in the companies commercial offerings so it gets continuous work. Its actually the next OS I want to play with ...
I appreciate all your replies. I really do. I can't say I've read everything but I have looked, scan, read much of what you posted, in one way or another e.g. I usually start with Wikipedia.
I nothing so far has convinced me there are enough resources put into any project to make anyone of them a "daily driver" for a desktop/laptop or that there will be anytime soon.
I can't complain as it's more a wish and/or a hope. I really don't have the time, brains, or money to significantly contribute. It's just that I was trying to ask those that might have one or more of those, if it might be a good time for the "foss" community to seriously consider it, or if not why. So, I can understand better.
way back in the before times...
Open Source projects went to great lengths to make sure they didn't use anything that could 'taint' the code (eg Samba )
I think the DeCSS stuff wasn't used till it had been publicly leaked and was considered 'common knowlege' or some such to prevent lawsuits
Not quite. There was nobody holding back on sharing for legal reasons, and it didn't prevent lawsuits.
The LiViD mailing list was full of people trying to get DVDs working with Linux, and they were already quite far into it. Derek Fawcus had already written the drive authentication code (so the drive would allow the host to read most disc sectors).
A piracy group, DrinkOrDie, reverse engineered the Xing DVD player for Windows and released DoD DVD Speed Ripper (no source code).
MoRE (Masters of Reverse Engineering) also reverse engineered the Xing DVD player and released DeCSS (no source code).
MoRE consisted of "mdx", "the nomad" and Jon Lech Johansen. "the nomad" reverse engineered the Xing DVD player. "mdx" used them to write a decrypter. Jon made a GUI frontend.
Prior to DeCSS's release, someone sent Derek Fawcus the decryption code. And he got around to playing with it, and was going to publish it on the LiViD list.
But before he did, DeCSS came out, and also its source code leaked, and Fawcus noticed his own code was in it (the drive authentication code), stripped of his credit. He complained about this and Johansen got in touch, and ultimately he allowed DeCSS to use his code under a non-GPL license.
Then, famously, Norway's "economic crime" unit brought criminal charges against Johansen. Ultimately, they concluded that Johansen himself hadn't infringed anything, because it was Derek Fawcus, "the nomad" and "mdx" who did that, and they're not Norwegian.
So, with that in mind:
- the LiViD mailing list would almost certainly have developed a DVD solution for Linux, not caring about clean room implementation, if DeCSS had not beaten them to the punch
- the fame DeCSS got also brought the angry litigators (though eventually justice prevailed)
> Something that may be of interest to people in the states is that I've had an offer of help to produce a specification of the algorithm - from which a third party could produce an implementation. i.e. proper clean room approach. This doesn't really matter from my point of view (or in my opinion most Europeans) but may be of use to the Yanks.
"Airbnb recently completed our first large-scale, LLM-driven code migration, updating nearly 3.5K React component test files from Enzyme to use React Testing Library (RTL) instead. We’d originally estimated this would take 1.5 years of engineering time to do by hand, but — using a combination of frontier models and robust automation — we finished the entire migration in just 6 weeks."
Color me unimpressed - it converted some test files. It didn't design any architecture, create any databases, handle any security concerns or any of the other things programmers have to do/worry about on a daily basis. It basically did source to source translation, which has been around for 30+ years.
If you told me five years ago that such a conversion had been done in six weeks, I would not have believed it. Even though some level of source-to-source existed. And I would definitely expect that such a conversion would have resulted in hideous, non-idiomatic code in the target language.
I’ve done something similar to this type of work with an llm. It produces code that is often too idiomatic, in that it introduces conventional approaches that are overkill for the task at hand. But this is almost an ideal scenario, because if the previous tests run clean, the newly converted tests can only fail by being wrong.
They can also silently reduce the tested scenarios, but that’s what code reviews are for.
I use LLM for coding every day. LLMs can totally make something super dumb: oh this test is broken, gatcha, lets replace it with something which is not broken (but very different).
> They can also silently reduce the tested scenarios, but that’s what code reviews are for.
code review of complicated scenarios is about as resource demanding as actually writing code, so shrinking time spent from 1.5y to 6 weeks totally can produce lower quality.
great comeback - "Dude - Trust me" :-P
got anything more compelling then your opinion ?
Have you ever done source to source translation work (I have ...)
Or is this just so exciting to you cuz you've never seen it before ?
exactly, you didn't provide any evidence or even decent arguements to support your position. I provided 3 distinct areas (of many) that it didn't touch that programmers have to deal with everyday. I also pointed out that the capabilities to do the sorts of transformations it did have existed for decades.
But given your comment history, backing up your arguments doesn't seem to be your strong suit...
>>Or, take another angle. If the US can no longer import vital goods, what do you think will happen? Will the goods magically stop being vital? Will we sit on our hands for several decades and wait for the problem to resolve?
No - consumers will just eat the cost like they did during COVID.
>> Or does the market respond to a need and rearrange itself to provide as profitably as possible?
rearranging itself will mean leaving the status quo, and passing the cost to consumers. Do you think companies are going to jump to spend millions of dollars and 1 year+ to build factories to work around something that might change in 6 months, or even 4 years ?
2002 was already past the dot com bomb, but as for 2008 recession, SURELY getting a custom dev job in 2008 was easier than now, and in 2009... well maybe about as hard as now.
The dot com bomb wasn’t bad if you didn’t limit your job search to the remnant of tech companies. I had 4 years of experience in 2000 living in Atlanta and was a Microsoft developer. I was getting offers left and right from boring old profitable companies like banks, insurance companies, Coke, Delta, etc.
As opposed to IRC? Forums? hell - even an email list... All things that are a lot easier to search then Discord, have much lighter clients, and can be done free.
Do you really think there was 'no way to communicate' for projects before discord ?
You're comparing ancient obsolete technology to a streamlined instant messaging client. There's a reason they 'just' use Discord. So now you want developers to have to check emails, IRC, forum posts, whatever other outdated communication platform, AND Discord? Why on Earth would they use all that when Discord takes care of all of those features and more.
Having more than one central place to communicate is 'hostile'.
>>You're comparing ancient obsolete technology to a streamlined instant messaging client
I'd hardly call discord a 'stream lined' system. Latency (especially in voice which is supposed to be it strong suit) is bad, search is subpar compared to even simple google searches, information is silo'd, its yet another place that can potentially leak PII, and basically the network is a SPOF. SourceForge promised all you mention, and was backed by (at the time) the largest IPO in history..and lasted what 2-3 years before it started decaying? I remember projects scrambling to find hosting after SF - and I remember how fast everyone jumped on GitHub .. I was donating to GH from the beginning just to help prevent another SF scenario...
As for it 'hostile' - its a lot easier to do a google search and find all sorts of information streams about something, rather then having to figure out the discord server for a project, search the discord server, and still miss any info. from outside of discord. That seems more 'hostile' to me then less wall-garden systems.
Edit: last I knew, over 1K oss projects still maintain libera.chat channels
In 2025, a company using IRC to communicate with its users would be like using ham radio. Sure it exists, but it is far too niche to be worth the effort.
How so? You literally just open a web page, and choose a nickname. It's easier than creating a Discord account and verifying your email address and phone number.
Discord has a gradual onboarding process. If your IP isn't poisoned, and your browser looks pretty normal, you just have to enter a username and you're in with an "unclaimed account"
They'll then nag you to fill in more details as you use it. It's honestly a pretty slick way of doing onboarding.
Highly curated, restricted posting, pretty much pure tech