• Ephera@lemmy.ml
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    10 hours ago

    That’s kind of hilarious. At first we had VMs to run entirely separate operating systems. Then we had Containers to separate everything except the kernel. And now we might get separation for just the kernel.

  • themoken@startrek.website
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    11 hours ago

    In a weird way this makes Linux a microkernel. They’re “macro” but isolated and cooperative. Coolest patch set I’ve read about in a while.

    • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      Not necessarily, maybe the main kernel has to keep running so you won’t be able to hot swap that (haven’t read the thing yet). In any case we’ve had updates without reboot for a while for a while, but it’s a pain to set up, there’s even a song about it https://youtu.be/SYRlTISvjww

    • 4am@lemmy.zip
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      13 hours ago

      Also sounds like we can run multiple kernels at once during normal operations, to isolate processes.

      So, could I run a second kernel for, say, Docker to use? Isolate those containers away from the host system kernel?

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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      12 hours ago

      This is already possible with kpatch, ksplice, etc. This new thing seems more like a hypervisor of sorts? Or maybe a next level docker where containers could package their own kernel?

      • KubeRoot@discuss.tchncs.de
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        6 hours ago

        In-memory kernel patching is complicated, AFAIK only select distributions support it, right? If kernel hotswap is successfully implemented this way, it should allow switching between arbitrary kernels at runtime without extra work or setup.

        Of course, that’s a pretty big “if”, but a simple unified system sounds like a great thing. And of course there’s more to this than swapping kernels.