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Comment by theamk | Hacker News Reader

Interesting! Is this the answer to Linux EBPF?

I wouldn't call it an answer. In-kernel Lua states[1] have been released with NetBSD 7.0 in 2015 and the work started at least as early as 2013, probably 2011.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6562611 for a previous discussion.

Edit:See [2] for a presentation at FOSDEM 2012

[1] https://man.netbsd.org/lua.4 [2] https://www.netbsd.org/gallery/presentations/mbalmer/fosdem2...

There is also `secmodel_sandbox`, a proof of concept for a Lua-based application sandbox on NetBSD:

https://github.com/smherwig/netbsd-sandbox

I really wish it was picked up more. NetBSD has a lot of innovative ideas and it is sad to see it go so forgotten and neglected.

NetBSD (and pkgsrc) have a very loyal user base, with quite different expectations from their system than the Linux or FreeBSD user base.

I guess what NetBSD is after (preserving the heritage of the original / early Unixes from which it descends, keeping things simple and stable with minimal requirements while staying as platform agnostic as possible) is a bit of a niche, which also explains the small user base.

More users favor simplicity of usage rather than technical simplicity, run powerful aarch64/amd64 machines rather than exotic / constrained hardware, and are more after the "move fast" model than after long term technical stability and consistency. A large "frenetic" project like Linux simply suits those users better.

Last I heard ePBF is basically stalled due to Spectre. They aren't planning to expand it. Interesting to see NetBSD doing that.

eBPF is being eagerly and actively expanded; just look at [1]. What's stalled is unprivileged eBPF, i.e. using it without being root.

[1] https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/922405/d85450150ef64840/

Ah yes, I meant unprivileged eBPF. Although your link doesn't really support your statement given the only review comment!

If only BSD had something like bpf... /s

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