I think the only way a microkernel OS is going to have anything remotely resembling broad success is if is natively Linux-compatible at both the application and driver level. Few people are going to switch to an OS with limited hardware and application support even if it is more secure and/or more flexible architecturally. Seems like I'm one of the few who sees it that way though. I'm not aware of any similar projects to my own (there are a few natively Unix-like microkernel OSes but none have Linux compatibility AFAIK).
On 1/22/20, Paul Boddie paul@boddie.org.uk wrote:
Such claims might contradict the traditional thinking about such matters. One of the things people tend to say about microkernel-based systems is that they will struggle to compete with Linux because of all the drivers already written for Linux, and the thinking then goes that maybe it is worth borrowing drivers from Linux. But surely one of the strengths of microkernel-based systems is
that there is a flexibility permitted in the design of such systems that should make driver development easier. (I also wonder how much people have looked at what goes into the average Linux driver.)
There is already a project that makes the Linux kernel into a library, which should mean that it will be relatively easy for a microkernel OS to borrow drivers from Linux, as long as the OS sticks to a process-per-subsystem-instance architecture rather than separating subsystems into processes vertically. It doesn't yet support physical device drivers, but it should be possible to add it (which is what I'm planning to do).