Hello Peter,
Genode's use of the NetBSD rump Kernel
driverhttp://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/14.02#NetBSD_file_systems_using_rump_kernels
seems like it's a real win..
Is there a chance the Genode OS might do the same kind of thing with a "Linux rump kernel" to also support up to date device driver code that is know to work with the latest Linux systems? .... My hunch is it could be a big win!
tl;dr Yes, it might be advantageous but the effort is probably too high, so the current answer is no.
Well, in one way or another we already do that with dde_linux. Though in this case, it is more like creating a Linux like environment in which drivers feel comfortable^W^W can be executed rather than porting a subset of Linux to userspace and run vanilla drivers on top of it. Creating something like the NetBSD based rumpkernel but with Linux is certainly feasible but takes much effort which in our case is imho better spend on enhancing other areas of Genode. We really appreciate the work Antti Kantee (and others) did by creating the NetBSD rumpkernel implementation and most certainly we will use it in more ways in the future. As for Linux we will most likely keep at creating especially crafted environments providing enough functionality to run a particular driver or component of Linux (like its TCP/IP stack).
Best regards Josef