Hi, On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 02:43:20PM -0500, Kete wrote: > On 2014-12-12 18:54, Olaf Buddenhagen wrote: > >On Mon, Dec 08, 2014 at 06:10:26PM -0500, Kete wrote:
> >>Smartphone users would benefit from this x15 > > > >Why smartphones in particular?... > * much less code taking up crucial space on the device Microkernel architectures actually need more code for the same functionality than monolithical ones. > * Things that should be in user mode are highly vulnerable in the > Android kernel space. Agreed -- but that's not different from desktops. > * Android Linux upgrades take a long time to download. The actual changes for a given fix are probably not bigger than they would be on a microkernel system. You would need an upgrade method based on binary diffs though to download only the actual changes. Plus, if the newer kernel is built with a different compiler, you would still get many gratuitous changes... So this is indeed a point where mobile devices are somewhat more affected -- though I for my part wouldn't consider this a major issue... > * Hardware vendors do not run their drivers through the Linux > community, so current drivers do not get updated for subsequent > kernels. I don't see how a microkernel architecture is supposed to help with that? The issues of binary drivers and lack of ABI compatibility for Linux modules seems entirely unrelated with the kernel architecture to me... > * Vulnerabilities are much easier to spot and patch in 100,000 lines > of code than 14,000,000. Again, that's right, but not different from other form factors. All in all, while I certainly agree that microkernel architectures have a bunch of advantages, I still don't see why this would be any more important for smartphones than for desktops... -antrik-
