Re: Niche for Hurd - discussion - lightweight virtualisation

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 02:10:29PM +0100, Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:
> Am Sonntag 16 November 2008 23:10:09 schrieb olafBuddenhagen@gmx.net:

> > Virtual appliances are about running software on your local machine
> > -- only easing management by decoupling the software from the Host
> > system, using some kind of virtualization solution. Hurdish
> > subenvironments might allow for a more optimal approach here than
> > the established full-blown virtualization solutions I believe...
> 
> I just read up on them in the Wikipedia: -
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_appliance
> 
> Would that as concrete example mean, that each Hurd would use
> translators to "masquerade" as a generic platform, hiding all the
> specifics beneath the mask? 

Not sure what you mean.

The idea is that each application (appliance) would come with a set of
translators, providing an individual environment, specially geared
towards the needs of the application, and relatively independent of the
host system.

Of course major changes in the host system might still affect the
applications in some way, so it's not as robust as an appliance running
in a fully virtual environment -- but it could be an interesting middle
ground between that, and traditional applications running in the shared
host environment directly.

-antrik-