Virtualisation (Theoretical)
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So I have been pondering about the Linux-Libre situation and the issues of data/driver blobs and it got me thinking.
Would it be possible to run a virtual machine that could run a non-free OS? Or would the underlying kernel prevent these additional layers from working? It's as simple as that.
Now I will make it clear, I do not want to actually do this - I do not need any technical advice on achieving such a situation. Just a thought game in the purest form.
jabjabs wrote:
> So I have been pondering about the Linux-Libre situation and the
> issues of data/driver blobs and it got me thinking.
>
> Would it be possible to run a virtual machine that could run a
> non-free OS? Or would the underlying kernel prevent these additional
> layers from working? It's as simple as that.
The virtual machine does not allow the virtual OS to access the physical
hardware so it would not work AFAIK.
Andrew.
This has nothing to do with blobs, so of couse it would work.
Cool, conflicting answers. :D
jabjabs wrote:
> Cool, conflicting answers. :D
Haha yeah.
To expand on my answer earlier, VirtualBox and KVM create virtual
hardware interfaces which the virtual OS talks to. Because VB and KVM
are free software and the interfaces are documented, the GNU/Linux
drivers within the virtual OS for those interfaces should also be free
(in theory).
But as legimet pointed out, there is no reason why binary blobs (whether
for drivers or otherwise) would not run inside the virtual machine
generally speaking. They would just not 'talk' to the real hardware,
only virtual.
Andrew.
Virtualization software might support passthrough of PCI devices,
handling the physical hardware in guest (KVM does support it). If the
host driver doesn't handle the device, the guest can.
The kernel has no restrictions on what modules or drivers can be used,
the provided modules are modified to not include nor recommend nonfree
firmware, with a side-effect of not supporting loading it without
replacing the kernel or module. Future Linux-libre versions will
probably fix it.
I read that it was going to be fixed in 3.14, but I never looked at the code to see if it was. I don't really care, though.
What about Docker? https://www.docker.com
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