Re: Rumpkernel comments by Linus

[matthew sporleder <msporleder%gmail.com@localhost>]

He hasn't looked at it so I don't think he's giving a real critique.
As far as I can tell he's talking about things like NDISwrapper or
softmodem and fails to grasp what rump is about.

On Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 2:40 PM, Swift Griggs <swiftgriggs%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:
>
> Linus seems to frown on the rumpkernel efforts since he believes it'll put
> the OS into a straight jacket (my words, not his). The original post is
> below. However, what say you folks? Is he reacting to something he doesn't
> know anything about based on his general instincts or is he making a
> legitimate critique? Is it a value-system judgment or is he missing some
> fact about the AnyKernel approach that negates his preconceptions? Is it
> simply a case that Linux already gets lots of DriverLove[tm] from the
> vendors and they just don't have to care or is that too cynical?
>
> -Swift
>
>
> ---[ Slashdot Snippet ]---
> https://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/06/30/0058243/interviews-linus-torvalds-answers-your-question
>
> "anykernel"-style portable drivers?
> by staalmannen
>
> What do you think about the "anykernel" concept (invented by another Finn
> btw) used in NetBSD? Basically, they have modularized the code so that a
> driver can be built either in a monolithic kernel or for user space
> without source code changes ( rumpkernel.org ). The drivers are highly
> portable and used in Genode os (L4 type kernels), minix etc... Would this
> be possible or desirable for Linux? Apparently there is one attempt called
> "libos"...
>
> Linus: So I have bad experiences with "portable" drivers. Writing drivers
> to some common environment tends to force some ridiculously nasty
> impedance matching abstractions that just get in the way and make things
> really hard to read and modify. It gets particularly nasty when everybody
> ends up having complicated - and differently so - driver subsystems to
> handle a lot of commonalities for a certain class of drivers (say a
> network driver, or a USB driver), and the different operating systems
> really have very different approaches and locking rules etc.
>
> I haven't seen anykernel drivers, but from past experience my reaction to
> "portable device drivers" is to run away, screaming like little girl. As
> they say in Swedish "Brnt barn luktar illa".
>