I would say something a little different. The kernel is a _library_ that has an init routine you can provide the function for. Or put another way, without the kernel your go program would have to have drivers statically compiled into it. This was the world of DOS, btw.
I agree with your point, but I must correct you on DOS: it had device drivers too. :) That's how we used to access mouse input, CD drives, network, extended memory, etc. Yes, it sucked on the graphics and sound; every app basically had to reimplement its own graphics and audio layer from scratch, but the rest was quite abstracted away.
There were generic VESA SVGA drivers towards the end of the MS-DOS era.
Sound blaster(16) also came close to being standard enough that games could just support that.
Extrapolating I think MS-DOS was on a nice trajectory to having complete enough (and reasonably simple and non-bloated!) APIs for everything important, when it was killed off. Late MS-DOS 32-bit games were usually trivial to install and run.
More importantly, a kernel is a platform. Conceptually it isn't that much different than other platforms such as Chrome or Roblox. They all have to care about the lifecycle of content, expose input events to content, allow content to render things, make sure bad things don't happen when running poorly programmed or malicous content, etc.
Yeah no. An operating system kernel doesn't just act as a host for userland processes, it interacts with hardware. Hardware behaves in weird and unexpected ways, can be quite hard to debug, can fail, etc.
This is why Linux is excellent. Users of other operating systems often remind people to update their device drivers. A non-technical Linux responds asking what the heck device drivers are. To the casual user, device drivers become invisible because they work exactly as intended.
The kernel talks to the device using an API it exposes. Similarly Chrome will talk to the OS using an API it exposes. OS APIs can also behave in weird and unexpected ways, be hard to debug and fail. Chrome protects the content it hosts from this complexity. Interacting with the layer underneath you is part of your job of hosting things on top of you.
Those are just drivers to stuff that runs its own cpu and interfaces over some kind of serial port. Printers are a well known example of this. Also intel wireless nics with their firmware blobs.
Not are drivers are like that. For instance, drivers/input/serio/ps2-gpio.c is all about timing the right signals.
You are missing the point. The kernel is still abstracting over those GPIO timings so programs don't need to know the timings themselves. This is the benefit of using a platform. These low level things get abstracted away from what you have to do.
Oh, I see. You're piecing together the layers much like a cake.
The way I see it, everything is tied together as some kind of flow chart where different elements have different jobs. Linux is quite a small part of the system when compared to Google Chrome. Even if you were to invert the cake, as a whole it still wouldn't make sense to me to see it that way.
Hardware tends to have more distinct layering than the lalala-land of software where pretty much anything goes.
It's not really Netflix. Its Microsoft, Apple and Google.
So say goodbye to using teams on Linux. Using Microsoft365 on any hardware that is not Microsoft approved.
Or logging in to your bank without an iPhone or an android. We will surely complain but the bank will say that we only support secure devices and that means iPhones and Android, and how come you are making a big deal about it just buy one of these two everyone else has one.
> Or logging in to your bank without an iPhone or an android.
This is already possible (and common!) many banking apps, for better or worse, use device attestation features that require varyingly official copies of android. Were you already complaining about this?
Yes, "we" were, definitely. I already can't freely choose the OS that I have installed on my phone because I'm limited in the apps that I can install. For example many government ID and banking apps will refuse to work on GrapheneOS even though that OS is security-focused and will probably keep you safer than your regular Chinese Android flavor. But it's not sanctioned by a big international corporation so it's a no. Is your argument that we shouldn't complain since it is already happening somewhere ?
What's an "official" copy of Android ? AOSP is supposed to be open-source. "Official" means controlled by a multinational corporation. I'm very puzzled that the reaction to these entities gaining even more power, outside of democratic control, is met with a "oh it may me worse, it may be not" type of reaction.
Would you be ok if for example your government's website to pay your taxes mandated a device with attestation knowing you can only get one from Google, Apple or Microsoft ?
I am not unaware of the potential dangers of device attestation.
> Would you be ok if for example your government's website to pay your taxes mandated a device with attestation knowing you can only get one from Google, Apple or Microsoft ?
My point is this is already possible today. A lot of apps do it. An open attestation API means that, at least theoretically, systems not owned by one of those three providers could be used. Today you get, functionally, a signal of "this is blessed android or not". An alternative world where the device attests "I am grapheneOS" and it is up to the service to accept that attestation or not is strictly better than the ability today.
I'm not sure what your point is here. How credentials are stolen today is irrelevant to the fact that today, right now, at this very moment, banks can and do already do the thing you're worried will be possible only due to the prevalence of passkeys.
Oh my point is that their device attestation thing is security theater.
It's clearly just for getting that iso certification.
It's a power play by the platform vendors.
The vendors are literally saying:
We now have this "security" feature and banks have to use it to be compliant and it only works on our platforms, so I guess you have to use our platform unless you want to be unbanked.
I mean, I would agree that it's not a particularly useful thing for consumer-phone-bank usecases, but that doesn't mean the feature is bad (or harmful).
Just to be clear, no one is saying
> banks have to use it to be compliant
nor are they saying
> it only works on our platforms
As far as I know, if systems were to use attestation it would be in a lot of senses more open than what attestation is available today (in the sense that more devices could use it). But also I don't think anyone who works on passkeys is saying banks need to support FIDO attestation to be "compliant".
If we're going full reductio ad absurdum and taking snipes instead of conversation, then maybe the appropriate response is: You can be poor all you want, but don't expect someone else to subsidize your life.
My comment isn't really that absurd in the context of this whole thread and its insistence that decent quality internet service is something only the wealthy and/or those who live in urban areas should have access to.
Unfortunately, that's not true. Article 1 gives congress very broad budgetary powers. Basically congress can spend money how they want, including bribing universities.
It depends on your understanding of Article 1 Section 8:
>"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;"
What does "general Welfare" mean in this context? Are those words just meaningless filler, or should they be interpreted to indicate that the spending must be in furtherance of another specifically enumerated power? I believe the latter (Madisonian take), but this is a contentious subject:
(dropped the snark)
Racist means grouping according to race, or potentially geographic origins. The word for what you're describing is probably closest to discriminatory, or prejudicial.
However, misanthropic is probably more correct as the paper applies to all people negatively.
And in fact there are people that go "all humans are <broken with some specific fault said to always show>". They have made "one big race". Historically the term (with predecessors like 'racialism' has had even other related nuances, e.g. superiority), but the matter does not change. I picked the term in its spirit.
> prejudicial
Prejudice can hit individuals and groups of disconnected individuals; "racist" is for prejudice against some (in theory) internally connected group.
> discriminatory
The opposite: the proponents do not discriminate (they do not make a distinction recognizing that some individuals are different from the supposed median in the group). (You are thinking of 'discriminate' as "hitting a group vs other groups".)
> misanthropic
Misanthropy is not necessarily attributing specific (undesirable) qualities to the group.
--
Now, since the occasion is there: could you please do me a favour? I never understood what "snark" instead is meant to mean, what people want to say with that. I asked other times (it is used in the guidelines), the only reply I ever got is sniping. Could you be so kind to explain what "snark" and "snarky" are supposed to mean? A non analytical reply (as opposed to this very branch of posts) suffices.
I don't think your math works out. Let's assume you want to move 3000 containers along a 3000 mile path. Let's also assume 1: you can stack containers one high onto the railway at the rate one container per minute, 2: the containers will move at 300 miles per hour and 3: the ship moves at 20.
On thenship all 3000 containers arrive at once and the total time to move them is 3000miles / 20 = 150 hours.
On the rail the containers take 50hr to offload. Hence the first container will arrive at the other side in 3000/300 = 10 hours. The _last_ container will arrive at 60 hrs 0 minutes. At one minute per container in the 150hrs it took the ship to arrive you could have delivered 140*60 = 8400 containers to the other side.
Not that the ship is only 15 times slower than the railway.
The governing factors on your railway are the ratios for distance to travel vs the offload time. Or put another way the delay bandwidth product.
