New Operating System Seeks To Replace Linux In the Cloud 335
New submitter urdak writes "At CloudOpen in New Orleans, KVM veterans Avi Kivity and Dor Laor revealed their latest venture, a new open-source (BSD license) operating system named OSv. OSv can run existing Linux programs and runtime environments such as a JVM, but unlike Linux, OSv was designed from the ground up to run efficiently on virtual machines. For example, OSv avoids the traditional (but slow) userspace-kernel isolation, as on the cloud VMs normally run a single application. OSv is also much smaller than Linux, and breaks away from tradition by being written in C++11 (the language choice is explained in in this post)."
Zing (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder how well it will fare against Zing (http://www.azulsystems.com/products/zing/faq)
Azul decided to go with route of extending vanilla linux with some kernel modules to provide extensions for most critical things, rather then replacing entire system and making custom jvm to utilize these extensions. I have a feeling that it is a lot better approach than using custom OS with plain jvm which is not aware of extra capabilities (if there are any...).
Re:So... no separation between system and userspac (Score:5, Interesting)
It boggles the mind that anyone would suggest something like this and then use the excuse of "well we only run on app on a box". That's such amateur hour nonsense. It's like running your cloud apps on classic MacOS or an Amiga.
Just because you've only got "one app", it doesn't mean that you've only got one process.
It sounds like running your 2013 server apps on an OS from 1985 but "in the cloud".
[shake head]
a C++ kernel (Score:4, Interesting)
Another refreshing feature of OSv is that is written in C++.
It's been 40 years since Unix was (re)written in C, and the time has
come for something better.
C++ is not about writing super-complex type hierarchies (as some people
might have you believe). Rather, it allowed us to write shorter code
with less boiler-plate repetition and less chances for bugs. It allowed
us to more easily reuse quality code and data structures. And using
newly standardized C++11 features, we were able to write safe concurrent
code with standard language features instead of processor-specific
hacks. And all of this with zero performance overheads - most of C++'s
features, most notably templates, are compile-time features which result
in no run-time overhead compared to C code.
You end up taking the bad with the good. And some features in C++ are worth avoiding when you're outside of a nice big userspace runtime. Like exception handling, especially for classes that use multiple inheritance.
L4 is a microkernel and hypervisor designed specifically to run an OSlib in a virtual environment with very little overhead. It seems to me that some things about L4 are very compatible with visualization, being that most drivers in L4 operate as a virtualized environment rather than a process.
Re:a C++ kernel (Score:5, Interesting)
Fortunately, with C++ you aren't required to use any particular feature, and don't pay a penalty for anything you don't use.
Furthermore, the alleged performance penalties that a lot of C programmers think exist in C++ actually don't.
Re:A new OS in the Cloud? (Score:2, Interesting)
It is worth mentioning that it is an Israeli-developed system (even if you didn't read the article, the names as noted in the summary are a dead giveaway), and we all know how chummy the Israelis are with the NSA. Of course there's a goddamn backdoor in it!
-- Ethanol-fueled
Re:Sorry, you're wrong. (Score:4, Interesting)
Implied ad-hominems aside, while I am "just a programmer", I did receive formal CS training. But that is neither here nor there.
I won't dispute that there is no one language that is going to be ideal for solving all problems, but it's entirely erroneous to presume that for certain types of problems, some languages are going to be better than others simply because the syntax of the language makes the solution more elegant to express and makes the resulting source code easer to understand.
This ease of understanding almost immediately translates to a faster development cycle, resulting in the end user receiving the product earlier, and in general will also mean that the software is less likely to contain unknown bugs (barring unknown bugs in the language implementation on the target architecture or bugs in the software development environment itself), so those choices can even impact the end user, even though they are unlikely to necessarily understand how, or even necessarily be aware of them.
Just because you *CAN* do the same thing in any imperative language that you can do in one particular one does not mean that they are all equally good choices, Choice of programming language should be less about making everything look like a nail because all you have is a hammer and more about picking the right tool for the right job.
Your prof was right... language choice is "just syntax"... but in the real world, "just syntax" makes a world of difference.
Re:So no benefits of C and all the bugs/problems C (Score:3, Interesting)
You are holding your C++ "howto" book the wrong way. Of course you need to be highly educated to properly use C++.
But if you have reached that level, you can do things like generic container classes which have bounds-checking, for example. Or your own string class with similar properties. That will immediately kill about 30% of current exploits, as they depend on all the shitty aspects of *real-world* C software-engineering.
Security is by now the most important issue in applied computer science. C++ helps you towards that in a way C can never do.