Difference between Fiasco and L4Linux...

[Adam Lackorzynski]

Hi,

On Sun Oct 01, 2006 at 22:46:50 -0400, Dustin Oprea wrote:
> I think I'm missing something really obvious, but what's the difference 
> between Fiasco and L4Linux... It appears they're made by the  same group.

Yes, they're made by the same group. Fiasco a microkernel, i.e. the
software that runs in kernel mode on the machine. L4Linux is a port of
Linux to run ontop of the microkernel in user space, with _no_ kernel
privileges. It can thus do weird things like crashing without disturbing
other applications running on the microkernel. You can also start
multiple L4Linuxes like in a virtual machine environment. Fiasco is also
preemtable so that it is good suited for real-time applications and has
special support for those cases.
 
> I use QNX RTOS at work, and I'm interested in using the microkernel 
> instead of the full-on monolothic kernel at home with my Fedora 
> installation. What goes in first: Fiasco, or L4Linux?

Well, 'instead' is hardly possible, as only L4Linux is able to run your
Fedora installation. And our L4 software lacks things like a web browser
or e-mail client which you might want to have. But we have an IP stack
running on L4 at least.
Back to your question. Fiasco comes first, then some L4 user-land
programs and then L4Linux which runs all the Linux applications.




Adam
-- 
Adam                 adam at os.inf.tu-dresden.de
  Lackorzynski         http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/~adam/