[haiku] Re: V\OS Project Announcement (Haiku on linux)
- From: Dario Casalinuovo <b.vitruvio@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2018 16:57:12 +0200
Hi Andrew,
On Thu, Jul 26, 2018 at 6:49 PM Andrew Hudson <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I was thinking, if you are going to map a whole OS onto another OS, why
not map Haiku onto Google Fuschia? Micro kernel onto micro kernel.
This is an interesting question. You may have noticed I mentioned Zircon,
which is the Fuchsia microkernel.
Now, the situation is a bit funny here and in some sense goes against what
a lot people said, and continues to say.
Zircon is a nude-and-crude microkernel. That means there is nothing more
into it than basic system primitives, like memory management and threading.
All other stuff is implemented in Garnet which runs in userland.
Now, the situation is that Zircon is obviously of NewOS heritage. So, when
it comes to the kernel_kit there's mostly a 1:1 mapping. In theory it may
be possible to even build a completely different platform on top of it, it
may be possible to extract fs and drivers from NewOS and move that into an
userspace component.
This is not a flawless thing to do, I'd have to use some fantasy to adapt
the fs caching system which is completely different.
You may understand it may, or may not makes sense. If I were doing
something like that, I'd probably just throw off NewOS and rework the whole
thing on top of Garnet. Without going to details, it is obvious that it's a
lot of work. It means the new code have to support FIDL and other nitpicks.
Now, on the other hand, leave apart for a moment the fact that Cosmoe
supply us a working version of the kernel_kit on top of linux, the reality
is that linux is much, much more similar to NewOS being both hybrid/modular
kernels. So, I know people may have told the opposite during the years, but
linux is really the right kernel for Haiku if Haiku want to keep the hybrid
model.
Moving to Zircon is a major paradigm shift. Since I am not a Fuchsia user,
and at the moment don't intend to switch to it, as I don't like how Google
pretend you have to use their services if you use their software. Now sum
it with the fact that I am a 15+ years linux users, the fact that we have
cosmoe and the result is obvious. Linux is definitely the most natural
choice.
Now, I didn't preclude this or the other door. If you look in the system
directory, the libroot is called libroot_linux, nothing really prevent you
from supplying a libroot_zircon or even a libroot_newos.
When you map Haiku onto Linux what do you get? A scarcity of native apps
on a monolithic kernel. If you map Haiku onto Fuschia, at least you have an
OS that will grow into something like BeOS.
Not necessarily. It may be possible to rework the app_server into a
client-drawing library (or even a wayland compositor, if we want to keep it
server-side), that'd mean basically having both linux and Haiku apps
running natively. In any case, I am not going to develop a complete OS
alone.
But at this point V\OS is like a freedom call, it is a proposal and a
proof-of-concept that shows the ignorance of people saying that linux +
Haiku doesn't make sense.
--
Saluti,
Dario
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