Re: A desktop environment[1] kernel wishlist

Andy Lutomirski
2014-10-21T19:28:17Z

On 10/21/2014 01:49 AM, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> Hey,
>
> GNOME has had discussions with kernel developers in the past, and,
> fortunately, in some cases we were able to make headway.
>
> There are however a number of items that we still don't have solutions
> for, items that kernel developers might not realise we'd like to rely
> on, or don't know that we'd make use of if merged.
>
> I've posted this list at:
> https://wiki.gnome.org/BastienNocera/KernelWishlist
>
> Let me know on-list or off-list if you have any comments about those, so
> I can update the list.

I don't know much about desktop environment infrastructure, but I think
the kernel probably already has a lot of what's needed for LinuxApps.

Tools like Sandstorm [1] (shameless plug, but it's a good example here)
can already sandbox normal-ish programs, and those sandboxes can be
launched without privilege [2].

Why is kdbus needed? Why are overlays better than, say, btrfs
lightweight copies here? Also, overlayfs might actually make it for 3.19.

[1] sandstorm.io
[2]
https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm/blob/master/src/sandstorm/supervisor-main.c%2B%2B

As for childfs, I implemented procfs polling a couple years ago, but it
never went anywhere:

http://lkml.kernel.org/g/1840e47fc4113af16989a4250d98bed62a9bce53.1354559528.git.luto@amacapital.net

If that would help, I can try to dust it off and get it in to the kernel.

--Andy