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Ask HN: What are the differences between various Unikernels?

3 points by thekodols ↗ HN
As I can't find any comparisons online, I hope to find some help in clearing this thing up here. My interest is generally academic, I'm not looking for a solution to a specific situation.

How would I go about choosing one Unikernel over another? What are the benefits and drawbacks of each? What are the major differentiating factors between them?

2 comments

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amirmc
It's still early days for most people to make deep comparisons.

I'd say the best thing is to actually try a few of them out. MirageOS has tutorials and I'm sure some of the others do too. I doubt enough people (outside the teams themselves) have had a chance to build useful things with each approach.

[dead] stray
Probably the most important factor in choosing a unikernel right now, is programming language. Most seem to support one language only.

OSv however, is different (though it's often spoken about as a Java platform) in that it's just a stripped down linux that doesn't support fork(2). I'm working on getting SBCL running on OSv and it already supports a few other languages.

LING is also interesting to me. Although it too, is a single programming language proposition -- erlang can be sweetened up a bit with LFE, Lisp Flavored Erlang. Spin up time for LING is most impressive.

I haven't really looked into MirageOS because I don't know the first thing about Ocaml. But it looks like the most mature of the bunch.

hth