Linked by Kroc Camen on Thu 25th Dec 2008 07:50 UTC, submitted by diegocg
Heise Open Source provides an extensive breakdown of the innovations present in the latest release of the Linux kernel, announced by Linus Torvalds. This version adds the first version of Ext4 as a stable filesystem, the much-anticipated GPU memory manager which will be the foundation of a renewed graphic stack, support for Ultra Wide Band (Wireless USB, UWB-IP), memory management scalability and performance improvements, a boot tracer, disk shock protection, the phonet network protocol, support of SSD discard requests, transparent proxy support, high-resolution poll()/select()... full Changelog here
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RE[7]: the list is impressive
by abraxas on Sun 28th Dec 2008 20:35
in reply to "RE[6]: the list is impressive"
Member since:2005-07-07
It is either a microkernel or Monolithic. How much of the linux kernel is actually executed in userland?
That's simply not true. Most kernels mix elements of a microkernel with elements of a monolithic kernel. Look at OSX which has a hybrid Mach/FreeBSD kernel. Linux has things like libusb, udev, and fuse which operate from userspace.
The graphics part of the driver stack is shared with other OSes that use X.org like OpenSolaris.
I'm not sure how that is relevant to the discussion.
RE[8]: the list is impressive
by akrosdbay on Mon 29th Dec 2008 06:33
in reply to "RE[7]: the list is impressive"
Member since:2008-06-09
That's simply not true. Most kernels mix elements of a microkernel with elements of a monolithic kernel. Look at OSX which has a hybrid Mach/FreeBSD kernel. Linux has things like libusb, udev, and fuse which operate from userspace.
According to me there are only two categories Monolithic or Microkernel. This whole hybrid kernel thing is just marketing.
udev does nothing to make linux more microkernel like. It is a dev filesystem that manages the /dev directories and symlinks. Udev just listens for kernel events and manages /dev entries.
Fuse has a kernel module that runs in privileged or supervisor mode.
In a microkernel nothing the kernel in privileged mode only handles IPC, address space management, interrupts and thread scheduling. Everything else is in non-privileged mode.
Also none of this makes any one OS better for everything, which is the point I was trying to make to the OP.
Edited 2008-12-29 06:34 UTC
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Member since:
2008-06-09
While Linux is not a microkernel it isn't as monolithic as earlier versions of Unix. A lot has been moved outside the kernel and it is extremely modular, much more so than Windows.
It is either a microkernel or Monolithic. How much of the linux kernel is actually executed in userland?
The graphics part of the driver stack is shared with other OSes that use X.org like OpenSolaris.