There is a group trying to develop an exokernel
operating system for real world use, and it is
supposed to be a hybrid with microkernels. There’s not a lot at their SourceForge site yet, except for a cute slogan, but there’s a comprehensive overview of the project’s goals.
Seems a little too “dreamy” for me. They seem to have some very good ideas, but I wonder how many of these ideas they’ll actually be able to develop. It’d be neat if this could become anything but vaporware though, there’s always room for another hobbyOS.
http://drex.sourceforge.net/
But anything using L4 makes me thing of the word ARG…
this looks like a very nice design and it seems theyre building on a good base.
i’m not sure about the “ultimate” binary compatibility… that sort of thing has always been out of reach due to too much complexity. i’d prefer that they get an elegant design working first.
i wonder if theyve looked at fresco, it seems to have many of the features they want from Frontiers
I don’t understand what they are trying to achieve..
At first it seems to look like L4, I don’t see/understand the differences..
Having just read the overview, I’m not too sure what they want to achieve. As said by Richard, it’s all a bit dreamy… (Hybriding exokernel and micorkernel, is like trying to mix OOP and Procedural programming at the core level).
However since it takes on average 7 years* before a new OS becomes a viable tool, it would be interesting to see where this project is in 7 years. But I still wish them luck.
*For this average, look at how long some of the common OS’s have been around, Linux about 10years, WinNT about 10years, OS/2 about 15 years, *nix (the grandpa of modern OS’s) +30 years. Even some of the hobby OS’s like SkyOS, have been around for at aleast 3-4 years…
Intercomponent message passing occurs using message queues which utilize a segmented memory buffer, so microkernel features can be used without the typical context switching penalties that are seen in microkernels like Mach.
This relies upon a very bad assumption — that we’re going to be saddled with the bad 32-bit x86 architecture forever. The Opteron addresses these problems.
L4, however, is a good starting point. It’s a nice little kernel that’s *very* fast.
…from an operating system written by Journey fans…
This OS-zizzle seems fizzle, bizzle. These prizzles don’t seem to knizzle jack shizzle about prizzling an OS-izzle and thizzle like Journey as wizzle.
FO SHIZZLE.