A kernel provides trusted runtime services for an operating system.
A microkernel provides a minimal set of trusted runtime services for an operating system, and relies on some protection mechanism for isolating subsystems to avoid corrupting the trusted core. Preemptive scheduling is not necessarily part of it; depends whether your system requires "time" to be a protected resource.
eBPF is a kernel service, just like processes, scheduling, IPC. If eBPF can isolate subsystems and supports safe collaboration of eBPF programs despite all running at ring 0, then the eBPF VM in the Linux kernel could qualify as a microkernel once you remove everything else.
> also, following your train og thought I could say that containers make this a microkernel.
If you could run all of the device drivers in containers such that they couldn't corrupt the kernel's data, then sure, you could run it as a microkernel because you wouldn't have anything left in the kernel except essential services like threading, IPC and containers.
A microkernel provides a minimal set of trusted runtime services for an operating system, and relies on some protection mechanism for isolating subsystems to avoid corrupting the trusted core. Preemptive scheduling is not necessarily part of it; depends whether your system requires "time" to be a protected resource.
eBPF is a kernel service, just like processes, scheduling, IPC. If eBPF can isolate subsystems and supports safe collaboration of eBPF programs despite all running at ring 0, then the eBPF VM in the Linux kernel could qualify as a microkernel once you remove everything else.
> also, following your train og thought I could say that containers make this a microkernel.
If you could run all of the device drivers in containers such that they couldn't corrupt the kernel's data, then sure, you could run it as a microkernel because you wouldn't have anything left in the kernel except essential services like threading, IPC and containers.