Amit Singh has just
announced
that Google is releasing
MacFUSE,
a
FUSE
compliant file system implementation mechanism for Mac OS X,
which makes a
plethora of file systems
already working on Linux
easily available to Mac OS X users as well. Some of the
tested
file systems include full read-write NTFS by
NTFS-3G,
transparent encryptions by
CryptoFS and
EncFS, SSHFS,
GmailFS, and more.
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Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-07-08
Yes, it's "like" a microkernel. I do not understand the question since it's pretty clear, in fact it was one of the reasons why people actually developed it in the linux kernel: allow people to implement easily (you can use whatever programming language you want) and safely. In fact, I've heard that Mac OS X also has a FUSE-like thing.
But there's a reason why ext3, ZFS, XFS, NTFS, HPFS and friends are not implemented in userspace in their native operative systems: performance. Anyway, with FUSE in linux/osx you get all the advantages of monolithic kernels (no, os x is not a microkernel, the fs lives in the same address space than the kernel and running as privileged code, i don't see how that is a microkernel) and microkernels at the same time.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:
2006-03-31
"FUSE makes it possible to implement a very functional file system in a normal program rather than requiring a complex addition to the operating system."
Is the success of FUSE an example of the benefits of a microkernel over a monolithic kernel?