[MirageOS-devel] Lunikernel.com early beta

[Andrew Stuart <andrew.stuart@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks,

Finally (after a long road), the first public beta of www.Lunikernel.com is 
online.

Please note that it is brand new and in a raw state so likely some things don’t 
work - if you let me know at lunikernel@xxxxxxxxx I’ll check out anything that 
comes up.

What is a Lunikernel?
It’s essentially a tightly defined but simple zipfile packaging format for tiny 
operating systems.  I came up with a new term “Lunikernel” because there are a 
number of tiny operating systems that can be built to have unikernel-like 
characteristics such as small size and run from RAM, and discarding unused 
parts of the OS, but they do not meet the definition of a unikernel, which is 
quite tightly defined according to wikipedia and unikernel.org. So a Lunikernel 
is an operating system that is unikernel-like in some ways, but is not 
necessarily a unikernel.

Can a unikernel be a Lunikernel?
Yes.  In fact right now there are only two Lunikernels on the site and one of 
them is Solo5/MirageOS.  I’ll be adding more flavors of Lunikernel soon 
including TinyCore Linux, Alpine Linux and Yocto Linux.

What is www.Lunikernel.com?
The core idea is that it is a place to share pre-built tiny operating systems.
The most interesting and important feature of www.Lunikernel.com is that it 
lets you upload a zipfile which overlays the contents of the initramfs.gz  This 
makes it super easy to customize any tiny operating system that uses 
initramfs.gz (which MirageOS does not, unfortunately).

What is the real point of this?
The key point is that application developers need convenient ways to customize 
tiny operating systems to their requirements, without needing to build the OS, 
but rather just adding the files that they need.  Hopefully this ease of 
sharing and customization will make it more appealing for developers to 
actually use unikernels/Lunikernels. 

Exports
You can export Lunikernels from www.Lunikernel.com in a few formats for 
booting, right now the most usable one is Google Compute Engine.


I’d love to hear opinions/feedback/criticism/interested/not interested.  
lunikernel@xxxxxxxxx


Andrew Stuart



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