Mungi is a 64-bit, single-address-space, capability-based operating system designed to easily support distribution and persistence. The initial public release is now available as GPLed source, and runs on the L4/MIPS (R4x00 CPU) and L4/Alpha (21164 & 21264 CPU) microkernels.
This release features a mostly complete kernel, user-level libraries for POSIX support, and some initial application code. It lacks device drivers, persistence, mandatory access control, and a raft of other features currently under development.
Mungi 1.2 released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
and i passed up an SGI indy because i thought i didnt need/want it… maybe it runs on my Compaq Aero, as it is NEC-VR4K based…
L4 is an amazing kernel. many more OSses should be built on top of its elegant foundation!
http://www.projectudi.org
If all little OSes supported this then there would be much less of a problem with device drivers.
It says all objects live in virtual memory. Does this mean that it will effectively only run on 64 bit systems? Because one would think a 32 bit system would run out of space to store objects pretty quickly. Also, they mention they are going to drop L4, but I didn’t see anything about what they are going to use in its place.
Project UDI seems like a good idea, but I’m pretty sure it’s dead. It was never really alive to begin with.
I got curious and wanted to explore it on my machine, so I located http://l4ka.org/
Remind me to check it out when I’ve free time.
Its about time page tables gave way to a better mechanism for mapping objects into virtual memory. These days, there is such extensive sharing (like in this single address space OS, where everything is effectively shared) that the required page tables eat up large amounts of memory. Page table sharing reduces this need somewhat, but only really makes sense for large objects (larger than 4MB on x86) that are shared by almost all processes. And inverted page tables (as used on PPC) are really bad for stuff like this, they were really designed for a more traditional, small-case sharing scenario.
Maybe I should give that a try on my Alpha instead of Gentoo (which is definately immature on that platform).
Mungi… been following that project for some time now, nice to see it’s still going!
last update to there calander was febuary 21, 2001
hmm. we should really try to pick this up and continue it. or create something similar. I’m lacking the technical knowledge I think, but I’d be willing to manage the site and stuff. Anyone up for it?
Quoting RJW:
It says all objects live in virtual memory. Does this mean that it will effectively only run on 64 bit systems? Because one would think a 32 bit system would run out of space to store objects pretty quickly.
Yes, the system needs a 64 bit virtual address space. After all a 32 bit system limits you to 4Gb, much less then what current hard drive technology allows. Limiting the total amount of data on the system to that would make the system unpractical.
However “18 014 398 509 481 984k should be enough for anybody”. And you can quote me on that 😉 But I can guarentee that will seem naive in 2012.
Also, they mention they are going to drop L4, but I didn’t see anything about what they are going to use in its place.
Actually it refers to change in L4 versions. In particular the new API for L4 offers some advantages to Mungi. There is no plans to move to another microkernel.
The UDI project only looks dead. The website isn’t updated much but there is a small amount of traffic on the mailing list and people are definitely still working on stuff. What keeps it from getting adopted as, say, the driver interface for a wholly new OS is that there’s no support finished for graphics drivers for instance.