logoalt Hacker News

matthewfcarlsontoday at 1:06 AM8 repliesview on HN

I know this is me coming from my spoiled perspective of Linux and macOS, but the advice of running a VM that manages the WiFi hardware and passing it back to the OS seems insane to me


Replies

josephgtoday at 1:42 AM

If an OS is designed to do this from the ground up, it can be incredibly efficient. (See: SeL4). Each process on linux is essentially its own isolated virtual machine already. Linux processes just have all sorts of ambient authority - for example, to access the filesystem and network on behalf of the user which started the process. Restricting what a process can do (sandboxing it) shouldn't have any bearing on performance.

Firerougetoday at 1:11 AM

Qubes OS is the Linux version of this concept. Hardware and their drivers get VMs for security boundary isolation.

hoherdtoday at 2:28 AM

In my experience, AI is really good at creating bloatware, which makes it doubly frustrating that it is eating up all the RAM.

show 1 reply
bandramitoday at 3:10 AM

Architecturally it makes a kind of sense given the way firmware operates (a lot of your peripherals are mini-computers inside your computer)

show 1 reply
skydhashtoday at 1:13 AM

Computers are so complicated right now that they're literally a network of computers. When you consider the closed firmware issue, using a VM is like having a small router you connect with ethernet. And I believe you could run such VM with 64MB of RAM.

secbeartoday at 2:11 AM

seems pretty solid from a security perspective actually

raverbashingtoday at 2:46 AM

Honestly it's not spoiled to want to use the hardware you paid for