[HN Gopher] Microsoft open-sources LiteBox, a security-focused l...
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Microsoft open-sources LiteBox, a security-focused library OS
Author : aktau
Score : 254 points
Date : 2026-02-06 15:13 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| aktau wrote:
| From the GitHub page:
|
| LiteBox is a sandboxing library OS that drastically cuts down the
| interface to the host, thereby reducing attack surface. It
| focuses on easy interop of various "North" shims and "South"
| platforms. LiteBox is designed for usage in both kernel and non-
| kernel scenarios.
|
| LiteBox exposes a Rust-y nix/rustix-inspired "North" interface
| when it is provided a Platform interface at its "South". These
| interfaces allow for a wide variety of use-cases, easily allowing
| for connection between any of the North--South pairs.
|
| Example use cases include: - Running unmodified
| Linux programs on Windows - Sandboxing Linux applications
| on Linux - Run programs on top of SEV SNP - Running
| OP-TEE programs on Linux - Running on LVBS
| aktau wrote:
| More links with discussion:
|
| Reddit discussion:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1qw4r71/microsofts_n...
|
| Project lead James Morris announcing it on social.kernel.org:
| https://social.kernel.org/notice/B2xBkzWsBX0NerohSC
| xjamesmorris wrote:
| FYI, I am not the project lead for Litebox. It is led by
| Microsoft Research.
| a-dub wrote:
| is this wslv1.2 (wslv1 redux) in now a more general cross-
| platform library firewall type thing?
| kvuj wrote:
| The cargo.lock file is 2200+ lines long. Did they spend a
| reasonable amount of time auditing these dependencies?
| Andrex wrote:
| They ran it through Copilot which gave it the all-clear.
| shikon7 wrote:
| What would be a reasonable amount of time to audit the
| dependencies?
| kvuj wrote:
| I would let them decide based on their security policy.
|
| If Microsoft states that they don't have any for a project
| like this, I would be wary of taking it too seriously.
| adolph wrote:
| grep 'name = ' ms-litebox-Cargo.lock | wc -l 238
|
| edit: grep 'name = ' ms-litebox-Cargo.lock |
| sort -u | wc -l 221
| dizhn wrote:
| I've always done 'sort | uniq'. Never bothered to check for
| the the unique flag to sort. Although 'uniq -c' is quite nice
| to have. -c, --count
| prefix lines by the number of occurrences
| adolph wrote:
| Yeah, to see the packages with multiple versions:
| grep 'name = ' ms-litebox-Cargo.lock | sort | uniq -c |
| grep -v '1 name' | sort -n
|
| Package windows-sys has the highest number of versions
| included, 3: 0.59.0, 0.60.2, and 0.61.2.
|
| Edit: Also, beware of the unsorted uniq count:
| cat <<EOF | uniq -c > a > a > b > a
| > a > EOF 2 a 1 b 2 a
| dundarious wrote:
| grep -v '1 name' excludes 11, 21, etc., but I take your
| point.
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| That's 238 dependencies (counting multiple versions of the same
| crate).
|
| * Many of them are part of families of crates maintained by the
| same people (e.g. rust-crypto, windows, rand or regex).
|
| * Most of them are popular crates I'm familiar with.
|
| * Several are only needed to support old compiler versions and
| can be removed once the MSRV is raised
|
| So it's not as bad as it looks at first glance.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Given, you know, Microsoft, I'd demand proof even if they said
| they did.
| anon291 wrote:
| A library os to me would typically mean it's aimed at hosting a
| single user program on bare hardware. I don't see that here, but
| maybe I'm just confused
| richardlblair wrote:
| The reddit conversation seems to allude to you being correct.
| bri3d wrote:
| It's both; it's aimed at hosting a single user program on
| another userspace, but also seems to have its own kernel as
| well?
|
| The "North" part seems to be what I think you'd traditionally
| think of as a library OS, and then the "South" part seems to be
| shims to use various userlands and TEEs as the host (rather
| than the bare hardware in your example).
|
| I'm really confused by the complete lack of documentation and
| examples, though. I think the "runners" are the closest thing
| there is.
| ukuina wrote:
| No deployment instructions?
| CasualSuperman wrote:
| With how buggy their flagship OS has become, why would I trust
| anything else they release to be better? Or even if it does work
| well now, why should I expect it to stay that way? Microsoft has
| burned through all possible goodwill at this point, at least for
| me.
| rafram wrote:
| This isn't supposed to replace Windows, and it isn't a GUI
| desktop operating system at all. I doubt anyone working on this
| has anything to do with the modern Windows desktop UX.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> This isn 't supposed to replace Windows,_
|
| OP wasn't suggesting it was, just that the lack of quality in
| one significant area of the company's output leads to a lack
| of confidence in other products that they release.
| Reddit_MLP2 wrote:
| but if the host OS is already comprised, what is the point of
| sandbox inside of it?
| necovek wrote:
| Maybe we need secure attestation for sandbox to be
| protected against compromised host :)
|
| It does sound hard, and might need to employ homomorphic
| encryption with hw help for any memory access after code
| has been also verifiably unaltered through (uncompromised)
| hw attestation.
| hudo wrote:
| UI of Windows is buggy and inconsistent. Kernel and low level
| stuff are actually very stable and good.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> Kernel and low level stuff are actually very stable and
| good._
|
| This. A while ago a build of Win 11 was shared/leaked that
| was tailored for the Chinese government called "Windows G"
| and it had all the ads, games, telemetry, anti-malware and
| other bullshit removed and it flew on 4GB RAM. So Microsoft
| CAN DO IT, if they actually want to, they just don't want to
| for users.
|
| You can get something similar yourself at home running all
| the debloat tools out there but since they're not officially
| supported, either you'll break future windows updates, or the
| future windows updates will break your setup, so it's not
| worth it.
| TkTech wrote:
| Is this not just Windows LTSB/LTSC? Which has been a thing
| forever.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| Maybe, could also be that for a 9 figure government
| contract they'll provide a custom LTSC branch just for
| you with only the features you want.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Talked about back in the Vista days publicly (I cannot find
| the articles now) - Microsoft has commitments to their
| hardware partners to help keep the hardware market from
| collapsing.
|
| So they are not incentivized to keep Win32_Lean_N_Mean, but
| instead to put up artificial limits on how old of hardware
| can run W11.
|
| I have no insider knowledge here, just this is a thing
| which get talked about around major Windows releases
| historically.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> Microsoft has commitments to their hardware partners
| to help keep the hardware market from collapsing._
|
| Citation needed since that makes no logical sense. You
| want to sell your SW product to the most common
| denominator to increase your sales, not to a market of HW
| that people don't yet have. Sounds like FUD.
|
| _> but instead to put up artificial limits on how old of
| hardware can run W11_
|
| They're not artificial. POPCNT / SSE4.2 became a hard
| requirement starting with Windows 11 24H2 (2024) (but
| that's for older CPUs), and only intel 8th gen and up
| have well functioning support for Virtualization-Based
| Security (VBS), HVCI (Hypervisor-protected Code
| Integrity), and MBEC (Mode-Based Execution Control).
| That's besides the TPM 2.0 which isn't actually a hard
| requirement or feature used by everyone, the other ones
| are way more important.
|
| So at which point do we consider HW-based security a
| necessity instead of an artificial limit? With the ever
| increase in vulnerabilities and attack vectors, you gotta
| rip the bandaid at some point.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Windows 11 is running on my ThinkPad T530. Its CPU is
| very nearly 14 years old.
|
| What is missing here that was present when this same
| computer was running Windows 10?
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> Windows 11 is running on my ThinkPad T530. Its CPU is
| very nearly 14 years old._
|
| Yes, you can bypass HW checks to install it on a pentium
| 4 if you want, nothing new here.
|
| _> What is missing here that was present when this same
| computer was running Windows 10?_
|
| All the security features I listed in the comment above.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| So, if I'm hearing this right:
|
| This computer had the security features that you listed
| while it was running Windows 10, and now that it is
| running Windows 11 it is lacking them?
|
| (I'm not trying to be snarky. That's simply an
| astonishing concept to me.)
| necovek wrote:
| If anything, Microsoft has a lot of problems because they
| support a wide variety of crappy hardware and allow just
| about anyone to write kernel level sw (drivers). Not sure
| if this changed, but they used to run in the ring0 even.
|
| This was most evident back in the 90s when they shipped
| NT4: extremely stable as opposed to Win95 which
| introduced the infamous BSOD. But it supported
| everything, and NT4 had HW support on par with Linux
| (i.e. almost nothing from the cheap vendors).
| hilti wrote:
| Never heard of Windows G .. that sounds exactly what I want
| for my older Thinkpads :-)
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Windows G .. sounds exactly what I want for my older
| Thinkpads
|
| I'm running 11 IoT Ent LTSC on a some T420; it runs
| pretty okay.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I've been starting with Tiny11 and then running the
| debloat scripts against it. Reduces the memory footprint
| to about 2GB and have found zero compatibility problems
| with doing this. You just have to use curl or something
| to download a browser because you won't even have Edge.
| bcraven wrote:
| Something similar, or indeed, exactly the same:
|
| https://www.windowscentral.com/software-
| apps/windows-11/leak...
| drnick1 wrote:
| Microsoft should just open source Windows at this point.
| workfromspace wrote:
| I geniunely wonder if Windows G's start menu also use React
| and if the start menu, right click or Windows Search still
| sucks in Windows G or not :)
| pjmlp wrote:
| React Native, halfway between Web and native.
| exceptione wrote:
| NTFS, not so great.
| p_ing wrote:
| NTFS is just fine. Stable, reliable, fast, plenty of
| features for a general purpose file system.
| repelsteeltje wrote:
| ...But no way can you wrap it into something that looks
| posix-y from the inside
| p_ing wrote:
| Why would you want to?
| repelsteeltje wrote:
| From the article, first use case:
|
| > Example use cases include:
|
| > * Running unmodified Linux programs on Windows
|
| > * ...
|
| That won't work if the unplugged Linux program assumes
| that mv replaces a file atomically; ntfs can't offer
| that.
| p_ing wrote:
| NTFS uses atomic transactions, that's the only way it has
| the ability to recover after a fault.
|
| You can read more if you wish in 'Inside the Windows NT
| File System' by Helen Custer, page 15.
| exceptione wrote:
| Even with Defender etc off, it is not fun. Lots of small
| file IO brings it on its knees. Some wants to blame the
| Windows I/O system, I don't know, but what I do know is
| that when people choose NTFS it is because they haven't
| an alternative. Nobody chooses it based on its quality
| attributes. I dare to say there is no NTFS system that is
| faster than an EXT4 system.
|
| If even MS internal teams rather want to avoid it, it
| seems like it isn't a great offering.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41085376#41086062
| p_ing wrote:
| NTFS on Linux should be near-par with ext4 on Linux.
|
| Remember, I said the _file system_ was just fine. It's
| that extensible architecture above all file systems on NT
| that causes grief.
|
| The only method to 'turn off' Defender is to use
| DevDrive, which enforces ReFS, and even then you only get
| async Defender, it's not possible to completely disable.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| > Kernel and low level stuff are actually very stable and
| good.
|
| In their intended applications, which might or might not be
| the ones you need.
|
| The slowness of the filesystem that necessitated a whole
| custom caching layer in Git for Windows, or the slowness of
| process creation that necessitated adding "picoprocesses" to
| the kernel so that WSL1 would perform acceptably and still
| wasn't enough for it to survive, those are entirely due to
| the kernel's archtecture.
|
| It's not necessarily a huge deal that NT makes a bad
| substrate for Unix, even if POSIX support has been in the
| product requirements since before Win32 was conceived. I
| agree with the MSR paper[1] on fork(), for instance. But for
| a Unix-head, the "good" in your statement comes with
| important caveats. The filesystem is in particular so slow
| that Windows users will unironically claim that Ripgrep is
| slow and build their own NTFS parsers to sell as the fix[2].
|
| [1] https://lwn.net/Articles/785430/
|
| [2] https://nitter.net/CharlieMQV/status/1972647630653227054
| jph00 wrote:
| This is not due to slowness of the file system. Native ntfs
| tools are much faster than Unix ones in some situations.
| The issue is that running Unix software on windows will
| naturally have a performance impact. You see the same thing
| in reverse using Wine on Linux. Windows uses a different
| design for IO so requires software to be written with that
| design in mind.
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| It's pretty typical these days for software, particularly
| games of the DX9-11 eras to perform better on Wine/Proton
| then they do under native Windows on the same hardware.
| m132 wrote:
| > Native ntfs tools are much faster than Unix ones in
| some situations. The issue is that running Unix software
| on windows will naturally have a performance impact. You
| see the same thing in reverse using Wine on Linux.
|
| Not true. There are increasingly more cases where Windows
| software, written with Windows in mind and only tested on
| Windows, performs better atop Wine.
|
| Sure, there are interface incompatibilities that
| naturally create performance penalties, but a lot of
| stuff maps 1:1, and Windows was historically designed to
| support multiple user-space ABIs; Win32 calls are broken
| down into native kernel calls by kernel32, advapi32,
| etc., for example, similar to how libc works on Unix-like
| operating systems.
| dgxyz wrote:
| This is on the mark.
|
| But there's another issue which is what cripples windows
| for dev! NTFS has a terrible design flaw which is the fact
| that small files, under 640 bytes, are stored in the MFT.
| The MFT ends up having serious lock contention so lots of
| small file changes are slow. This screws up anything Unixy
| and git horribly.
|
| WSL1 was built on top of that problem which was one of the
| many reasons it was slow as molasses.
|
| Also why ReFS and "dev drive" exist...
| p_ing wrote:
| The file system isn't slow. The slowness will be present in
| any file system due to the file system filters that all
| file system calls pass though.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Right, by "file system" here I mean all of the layers
| between the application talking in terms of named files
| and whatever first starts talking in terms of block
| addresses.
|
| Also, as far as my (very limited) understanding goes,
| there are more architectural performance problems than
| just filters (and, to me, filters don't necessarily sound
| like performance bankruptcy, provided the filter in
| question isn't mandatory, un-removable Microsoft
| Defender). I seem to remember that path parsing is
| accomplished in NT by each handler chopping off the
| initial portion that it understands and passing the
| remaining suffix to the next one _as an uninterpreted
| string_ (cf. COM monikers), unlike Unix where the slash-
| separated list is baked into the architecture, and the
| former design makes it much harder to have (what Unix
| calls) a "dentry cache" that would allow the kernel to
| look up meanings of popular names without going through
| the filesystem(s).
| BrouteMinou wrote:
| The Windows filesystem isn't slow per se, it's a slowness
| caused by "a thousand cuts" type of problem.
|
| https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/873#issuecomment-42
| 5...
| autoexec wrote:
| Microsoft doesn't have a very good track record with security
| or privacy. Maybe it works, but yeah you'll probably get
| screwed over at some point.
|
| Still, the fact that it's open source is a good thing. People
| can now take that code and make something better (ripping out
| the AI for example) or just use bits and pieces for their own
| totally unrelated projects. I can't see that as anything but a
| win. I have no problem giving shitty companies credit where its
| due and they've done a good thing here.
| simonw wrote:
| Microsoft employ over 100,000 engineers. I'd advise against
| assuming that everything produced by any of them is bad because
| of bugs in Windows.
| lysace wrote:
| This is also still small/unimportant enough not to be
| poisoned by their broken corporate culture.
| replooda wrote:
| The criticism was directed at the company's product, not the
| employees...
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| The response appears to be pointing out that with so many
| employees (engineers), it's unlikely that they all work on
| Windows.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| And yet they still work for a company that has shown it
| isn't overly concerned about quality or reliability in
| its products.
| 1f60c wrote:
| Thaaat's _capitalism_
| workfromspace wrote:
| Not op, and I generally agree with your assumption but not
| for Microsoft, as I don't think it's limited to Windows:
|
| Teams, Office (especially online), One Drive, SharePoint,
| Azure, GitHub, LinkedIn, all became very shitty and partially
| unusable with increasing number of weird bugs or problems
| lately.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| They seem to be alienating a lot of their users right now in
| a lot of different products. There's a significant surge in
| open source software right now and Linux and all the people
| that are coming over are a bit more than usual. Their
| customer base seems tired of the game.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| The problems with Windows today have nothing to do with bugs
| but with the strategic vision of Nadella.
| solarkraft wrote:
| This is not about individual employees. It's in the nature of
| being an employee to be beholden to what's incentivized by
| their company's management and structure.
| necovek wrote:
| Windows is ultimately a lot more complex, and not open source.
| This also builds on the Linux ecosystem, so even if it comes
| from Microsoft, I imagine engineering culture is different from
| that on Windows and especially their online platforms (that's
| even worse than Windows if you ask me!).
| dooglius wrote:
| MSR is a somewhat independent org; you should be making
| predictions based on other MSR projects
| BrouteMinou wrote:
| Microsoft US a massive corporation with so many people,
| business units, departments.
|
| A comment like yours is just like saying: "I know a buggy open-
| source software, why would I trust that other open-source
| project? The open-source community burned all possible
| goodwill".
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| I'm not defending MS in any capacity, but this library is open
| for viewing if you were so inclined.
| sscarduzio wrote:
| Can it replace Wine to run Windows apps on Linux?
| marklar423 wrote:
| IIUC, if you have the source you can recompile said Windows app
| with LiteBox to statically link in the Windows OS kernel
| dependencies, so it'll run on any compatible processor
| regardless of OS (since it won't be making syscalls anymore).
| It's a unikernel basically.
|
| That's the theory, but I don't know how far LiteBox is along to
| supporting that workflow.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| They say
|
| > It focuses on easy interop of various "North" shims and
| "South" platforms.
|
| For replacing wine on Linux the "North" would be kernel32 API
| or similar, the "South" would be Linux sys all API.
|
| However this is meant as a library, thus require linking the
| Windows program to it and eine is more than the system
| interface, it has all the GUI parts etc of win32 API
| cbondurant wrote:
| at first I thought library OS might have meant an OS meant for
| use at a library.
|
| Honestly far less interesting to know I was wrong.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| yeah, same here, I was like "wow what an interesting side to
| their business, a whole operating system intended to serve
| public and academic libraries!"
| rendaw wrote:
| Is it not? You link the "library os" and you no longer need an
| os (when running in a supervisor) IIUC.
| stackghost wrote:
| I think parent poster was referring to an actual library,
| i.e. where you would borrow books.
|
| That's also what I thought this was, and came to the comments
| expecting to see something neat about why libraries might
| need bespoke operating systems.
| noumenon1111 wrote:
| Me too. Honestly I was vibing on nostalgia for this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynix_(software)
| loufe wrote:
| The lack of integrated sandboxing in windows compared to
| android/iphone is still frankly unacceptable. I've become
| increasingly paranoid about running any application on Windows
| (not that your average linux distro is even remotely better) and
| yet Apple and Google seem to be far, far ahead in user
| permissions (especially with GrapheneOS, god bless that team) and
| isolation of processes.
|
| Consumers and businesses deserve better. It's crazy to me that in
| 2026 Notepad++ being compromised means as much potential damage
| as it does, still.
| digiown wrote:
| The sandboxing on mobile platforms puts the OS vendor in a
| special position to enforce a monopoly on apps and features.
| Apple enforces it aggressively, while Google only reluctantly
| so far. It also prevents the user from exerting full control of
| the system. Apple does it by locking things down directly,
| while Google punishes you for owning your devices with
| attestation.
|
| There has to be a better way. I think Linux's flatpak is a
| reasonable approach here, although the execution might be
| rather poor. I want a basic set of trusted tool that I can do
| anything with, and run less trusted tools like GUI programs in
| sandboxes with limited filesystem access.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Those are policy decisions not really connected to the
| sandboxing technology. They control what sort of signing the
| system will accept and make it so that it only runs things
| they approve, and they only approve things that are sandboxed
| a certain way. The exact same sandboxing could be used with a
| system where an admin user can decide what gets to run and
| what kind of sandboxing is required for each thing.
| pjmlp wrote:
| UWP, and MSIX on Win32 via Appstore.
|
| There is also sandboxing configuration via Intune for
| enterprises.
| malkia wrote:
| There are containers, and one of their users is the Windows
| Sandbox - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/security/applicati...
| newsoftheday wrote:
| > I've become increasingly paranoid about running any
| application on Windows (not that your average linux distro is
| even remotely better)
|
| Linux excels over Windows in the area of security by a wide
| margin, I have no qualms about running an app on Linux versus
| Windows, any day of the week.
| madspindel wrote:
| > Linux excels over Windows in the area of security by a wide
| margin
|
| No, this is wrong but might be true if you are talking about
| Linux package manager vs. Random Windows .exe on internet.
| But if you are talking about Secure Boot, encrypted disk,
| sudo etc. Windows is more secure but it looks like
| https://amutable.com/ will make Linux more secure like
| Windows.
|
| Edit: Some insecure things on Linux: Dbus (kwallet etc.),
| sudo, fprint, "secure boot".
| gdevenyi wrote:
| What is a 'library OS'?
| zamadatix wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system#Library
| charles_f wrote:
| I think that's an OS in the form of a library, like Wine for
| example. From what I get from the description it allows you to
| run programs on your real OS and make it see a cut down API to
| your actual system to reduce the attack surface.
| bri3d wrote:
| It's a library that is linked to in place of an operating
| system - so whatever interface the OS provided
| (syscalls+ioctls, SMC methods, etc.) ends up linked / compiled
| into the application directly, and the "external interface" of
| the application becomes something different.
|
| This is how most unikernels work; the "OS" is linked directly
| into the application's address space and the "external
| interface" becomes either hardware access or hypercalls.
|
| Wine is also arguably a form of "library OS," for example
| (although it goes deeper than the most strict definition by
| also re-implementing a lot of the userland libraries).
|
| So for example with this project, you could take a Linux
| application's codebase, recompile it linked to LiteBox, and run
| it on SEV-SNP. Or take an OP-TEE TA, link it to LiteBox, and
| run it on Linux.
|
| The notable thing here is that it tries to cut the interface in
| the middle down to an intermediate representation that's
| supposed to be sandbox-able - ie, instead of auditing and
| limiting hundreds of POSIX syscalls like you might with a
| traditional kernel capabilities system, you're supposed to be
| able to control access to just a few primitives that they're
| condensed down to in the middle.
| kccqzy wrote:
| > So for example with this project, you could take a Linux
| application's codebase, recompile it linked to LiteBox
|
| If you have to recompile, you might as well choose to
| recompile to WASM+WASI. The sandboxing story here is
| excellent due to its web origins. I thought the point of
| LiteBox is that recompilation isn't needed.
| bri3d wrote:
| Looking more closely, it looks like there are some "North"
| sides (platforms) with ABI shims (currently Linux and OP-
| TEE), but others (Windows, for example), would still
| require recompilation.
|
| > If you have to recompile, you might as well choose to
| recompile to WASM+WASI.
|
| I disagree here; this ignores the entire swath of
| functionality that an OS or runtime provides? Like, as just
| as an example, I can't "just recompile" my OP-TEE TA into
| WASM when it uses the KDF function from the OP-TEE runtime?
| kccqzy wrote:
| I had previous experience with WASM on TEE. Just use the
| foreign function interface. Remember WASM isn't native
| code so you still need other native code to run WASM
| (such as wasmtime), and you can import other native
| functions into WASM through the runtime.
| tombert wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand what a library OS is; can someone here
| elaborate?
| greatgib wrote:
| My understanding of this is that it is a sandbox. Providing a
| common interface like if it was an OS for the program to run
| inside, but avoiding the program to use the OS directly.
|
| What is unclear is if it uses its own common ABI or if you use
| the one of the host os. I don't know why but from the project
| description I have a little bit of feeling that this is another
| vibe coded project.
| wrs wrote:
| A library OS is an OS that is linked directly to your program
| instead of being a separate program accessed through a syscall
| to kernel mode. About the same as a "unikernel", but a more
| recent term.
|
| Basically it lets your program run directly on a hypervisor VM,
| though this one will also run as a Linux/Windows/BSD process.
| hypfer wrote:
| "We did not find any viable commercial use for it, but maybe you
| will."
| burnermore wrote:
| Baaah! Microsoft, security-focused in a single sentence!
| bendover690 wrote:
| Cool
| throwoutway wrote:
| No mention of starting with a design specification & then tied to
| formal verification the whole way?
|
| It sounds interesting and a step forward (never heard of library
| Os itll now), but why won't this run into hundreds of the same
| security bugs that plague Windows if it's not spec'd and
| verified?
| anon291 wrote:
| People seem to believe writing things in rust means it's
| correct.
| R_Spaghetti wrote:
| I'm not sure whether Microsoft, the makers of Windows 95 (after
| which I stopped taking them seriously), are the sharpest tool in
| the box when it comes to security.
| ementally wrote:
| Copilot
|
| https://github.com/microsoft/litebox/blob/main/.github/copil...
| pjmlp wrote:
| To be expected, given how many organisations now require
| employees to use AI if they want to meet their OKRs, especially
| all that sell AI tools.
| outofpaper wrote:
| What's dumb, on top of everything, is needing to store non
| special standard operating procedures in specific AI folders
| and files when wanting to work with AI tooling.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Copilot today supports the top-level AGENTS.md approach as
| well, which seems to be the cross-tool "standard".
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Extremely simple changes do not require explicit unit tests.
|
| I haven't used Copilot much, because people keep saying how bad
| it is, but generally if you add escape hatches like this
| without hard requirements of when the LLM can take them, they
| won't follow that rule in a intuitive way most of the time.
| sandos wrote:
| Yeah, I tried various very sane-looking instrucions file when
| starting to use copilot 6 months ago. Turned out it was not
| really useful. It mostly follows the rules anyway, but it
| also often forgot to. So turns out, especially with the fast
| turnaround with models today, it was better to just forego
| these instructions files.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It is kind of alright, I use mostly on VS when coding C# or
| C++, for code completions, error analysis, check code quality
| and such.
|
| As agent, or writing everything for me, not yet.
| bwat49 wrote:
| the $10 plan makes a great backup to claude or codex and
| the inline completions are nice
| ho_schi wrote:
| Another layer (ouch) to abstract away Windows (ouch * ouch).
|
| Use Linux or BSD and ignore that approach for _Vendor Lock-in*
| into their "library OS"._
| 5o1ecist wrote:
| Hmmm. Another, admittedly interesting, step towards the complete
| digital lockdown. Isolate and virtualize everything, now also
| governed by AI!
|
| I wonder if they, the industry as a whole, eventually will make
| being able to freely use a PC a subscription, bastardizing
| "freedom" completely.
| runjake wrote:
| For others as lost as I am and want the tl;dr:
|
| A library OS is an operating system design where traditional OS
| services are provided as application-linked libraries, rather
| than a single, shared kernel serving all the programs.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I know we're not supposed to complain about comment quality, but
| -- I came here to look for interesting technical analysis but
| instead it's Slashdot level snipes about Microsoft the company.
| And yes, I also dislike Windows and Microsoft generally but this
| looks like a very interesting project and I'm frankly frustrated
| at the level of discussion here, it's juvenile. This has nothing
| to do with Windows, and it looks like most people didn't even
| read past the title.
|
| I'll play with this later today after work and see how mature it
| is and hopefully have something concrete and constructive to say.
| Hopefully others will, too.
| BrouteMinou wrote:
| I am with you on that. HN is becoming a "14 years old edgy
| mini-tech" Facebook.
|
| "Microsoft bad, Linux good" kind of comments are all over the
| place. There is no more in depth discussions about projects
| anymore. Add the people linking their blogs only to sell you
| thier services for an imaginary problem, and you get HN 2026.
|
| It's maybe the time to find another tech media. If you know
| one, I would be glad to know.
| bg24 wrote:
| Would be nice to see an OCI runtime and if it can give high-
| performant I/O as opposed to other we have today (eg. Gvisor).
| mlacks wrote:
| Library Operating System (LibOS) is a type of operating system
| that runs in the address space of applications, allowing for a
| small, fixed set of abstractions to connect the library OS to the
| host OS kernel. This approach offers the promise of better system
| security and more rapid independent evolution of OS components.
| LibOS can run significant applications, such as Microsoft Excel,
| PowerPoint, and Internet Explorer, with significantly lower
| overhead than a full VM. It can also address many of the current
| uses of hardware virtual machines at a fraction of the overheads.
| 1
|
| LibOS is lightweight, with extremely short startup time, and can
| be used to run Linux programs, making it a versatile option for
| various applications. It is designed to provide compatibility and
| sandboxing without the need for VMs, making it a lightweight
| alternative to containers and VMs. 1
|
| The Library Operating System for Linux was announced on the Linux
| kernel mailing list, indicating its official recognition and
| support within the Linux community.
| HendrikHensen wrote:
| Thanks, ChatGPT.
| salvesefu wrote:
| The GPT found this and thought it was relevant: "an
| introduction of library operating system for Linux" -
| https://lwn.net/Articles/637658/
| sneak wrote:
| It runs linux programs, not PowerPoint or Excel.
| dzonga wrote:
| Microsoft gonna release a windows flavored Linux Distro soon ;)
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