• spez@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      I have heard about Redox. What’s the difference between a microkernel and a kernel? Does redox use the linux kernel? Or has the guy written that in rust too?

      • dukk@programming.dev
        0·
        11 months ago

        Well, think microkernels as the bare minimum. They give you just enough to write your own OS on top of that: only the bare essentials run in kernel space, whilst everything else runs in user space and has to communicate with the kernel. Compare this to a monolithic kernel, like the Linux kernel: here, the whole operating system is run in kernel space, which means that data doesn’t need to be moved between user and kernel space: this makes the OS faster, but at the cost of modularity. Redox doesn’t use the Linux kernel, it uses its own microkernel written in Rust.

        Edit: A good example would be driver. In a microkernel, these run separately from the kernel and interact with it when needed. In a monolithic kernel, these drivers would be included in the kernel itself. They both have their pros and cons: if you’re interested, feel free to look it up.

        • jcg@halubilo.social
          0·
          11 months ago

          Does that mean on a microkernel you’d essentially have double the amount of code execution for a driver (i.e. driver makes a call to the kernel, kernel verifies and then executes rather than the driver just executing the call) meaning double the latency? Seems like it would cause a lot of problems.

          • ferret@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            0·
            11 months ago

            Nowhere near double, the kernel can be extremely sparse on it’s side, but there is a small latency hit

        • spez@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          0·
          10 months ago

          thanks for the explanation! I was thought it had something to do with linux since the lead dev works for System76.

          • dukk@programming.dev
            0·
            10 months ago

            No problem! Actually, System76 is currently working on rewriting the COSMIC desktop in Rust (or really, just writing a new DE in Rust). It’s a pretty ambitious project that should hopefully get released some time this year. I wouldn’t be surprised if the lead redox dev was working on it too: low-level Rust knowledge is exactly what they need.

  • AzureInfinity@leminal.space
    0·
    11 months ago

    This actually wrong way to do it, here the pro way:

    1.Start writing a game/app/engine/os.

    2.Write dozen utility packages for it.

    3.Write high-level packages for #2

    4.Write a “light-weight” version of #3 when disgusted with bloat of #3.

    5.repeat #2 with more modern rust code.

  • Norgur@kbin.social
    0·
    11 months ago

    So I watched a few guides and did all that… what now? Would you think a shopping list app is doable for my knowledge after this? It looks really hard compared to NorgurOS… :(