L4Linux

- Running Linux on top of L4

Status information

L⁴Linux

The latest release of L⁴Linux is based on Linux 3.9. It uses L4Re as a basis. It is not tuned currently but has shown to be stable to run most of the Linux applications.

Older versions of L⁴Linux up to including 2.6.31 are using L4Env as a basis.

Older L⁴Linux versions

The latest release of L⁴Linux-2.4 is based on Linux 2.4.30
It runs on V2, X2 and L4Env APIs, and supports Fiasco and L4Ka::Pistachio in various configurations.

Older ports of Linux 2.2.26 and 2.0.21 were also developed.

L⁴Linux-2.0, L⁴Linux-2.2 and L⁴Linux-2.4 are not maintained anymore.

Functionality

L⁴Linux provides full binary compatibility with the original Linux kernel.

Performance

Compared to monolithic Linux, there is a small performance tradeoff because of the µ-kernel architecture. However, the initial L⁴Linux has been somewhat optimized, and on L4/x86 it has a very acceptable slowdown of less than 4 % for any relevant load.

For more information, please check out our papers from the papers section.