DROPS is the educational operating system of the Dresden University
of Technology, Germany (TU-Dresden). Its name is an acronym for
Dresden Real-Time Operating System, which reveals its strongest
feature, it is real-time capable and it is designed with security in
mind. Its homepage can be found here. Note: This is the 4th entry to our Alternative OS Contest which runs through 14th July!
Post a Comment
Member since:
2006-03-22
Author nicely presents different fetures of DROPS without going too much into internals/code. He also doesn't repeat "we're the best" all the time, and is honest about some problems awaiting for people who will want to hack/code for this system. Article has links to more informations, and even nice screenshots (though i think most of those different GUIs there are far from "good looking" they still show quite a lot 
.
All written clearly and understandable - made me want to try demo cd (i'm downloading it while typing this comment).
IMHO best entry in contest so far.
Thanks
-- edit --
fixed spelling mistake and some words layout (thanks to OSNews authors for edit option . hopefully comment is understandable.
Edited 2006-07-13 19:07
Member since:
2006-03-31
This article was very well written. The author provided enough details about the operating system environment without being excessively technical. I enjoyed reading about the author's involvement in the project. Most importantly, the author uses proficient English, making the reading not arduous at all. Each thought was succinct but still descriptive.
Member since:
2005-07-06
But I am a bit confused about one thing. When the author talks about running Linux OVER L4, does he mean the Linux kernel has been adapted to run modules against the L4 microkernel? Or does the author mean linux in the generic overlying tools sense?
Linux itself IS a kernel (not a micro-kernel). I guess I am just wondering if they adapted linux by layering it on top of a microkernel (and why?).
Sorry for being a dolt here.
[edit]
Just went to the L4Linux site... I think I get it now.
Edited 2006-07-14 02:56
Member since:
2005-07-06
Member since:2005-08-26
The performance is slightly worse than plain Linux because of the overhead of more context switches.
In fact, we published a paper about the performance of microkernels, by comparing L4linux on Fiasco, plain Linux and Linux on Mach. The conclusion is that the overhead "can be kept somewhere between 5% and 10% for applications". You may read the paper here:
http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/pubs/sosp97/
"Performance of µ-Kernel-based Systems"
Virtualization is possible in the sense that you may run more than one L4Linux instance on top of the L4 microkernel. You should make sure that those instances use distinct drivers for hardware, to avoid collisions;-).
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:
2006-05-09
Hi:
This is a very well written article: It describes the functionality of DROPS, gives a short but clear idea of the microkernels and L4, shows the integration to Linux and mentions the problems that they are still having.
I like a lot the L4 family (Fiasco, Pistachio, etc.) and I think it will be very important in the next years when the monolithic kernels will become harder and harder to maintain.
Excellent article, congratulations Steffen.
Ernesto
Member since:
2005-07-07
I'll repeat it because it is necessary to repeat: This has been by far the best entry. I remember hearing about DROPS once before but I don't recall obtaining this much information about it from the article I read. I beleive this article was very well written and very informative without being overly technical and detailed. It was just the right amount of information for a news site like OSNews. Can we get steffen as an editor?
