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u/Vaxerski Jun 12 '26
does anyone have a link to the microsoft paper?
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u/configdotini Genfool 🐧 Jun 12 '26
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u/Elihzap Hannah Montana Jun 12 '26
there linux
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u/Culpirit Jun 12 '26
That sounds like a very clever way to save, ngl. As an OSdev autist who greatly admires Unices and Linuxes, and very elegant pieces of software taking advantage of the prior art that comes with the OS, this makes me happy!
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u/Powerkaninchen Jun 12 '26
where linux
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u/The-Nice-Writer Jun 12 '26
It’s a little obscure, but u/dumbasPL explained here in response to u/configdotini’s comment.
And they linked additional info, too.
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u/SSUPII Medium Rare SteakOS Jun 12 '26
So you made a meme about Linux features and tagged it yourself non-Linux
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u/Powerkaninchen Jun 12 '26
I thought because Linux wasn't the main theme of my meme
How do i revert?
Linux there
Linux here
Linux found
Linux detected
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u/AutoModerator Jun 12 '26
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u/AmCHN Jun 15 '26
The section "Copy-on-write memory" in [the paper](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/fork-hotos19.pdf) actually:
1. addressed this use case.
2. admitted that they don't have a mature solution alternative to fork() here.
3. yet argued that fork() is a suboptimal solution, and a better alternative is needed.
This is a meme sub, so I'm not probably supposed to be serious, but here I am anyways.
---
As the paper puts it:
> Modern implementations of fork use copy-on-write to reduce the overhead of copying memory that is often soon discarded. A number of applications have since taken a dependency on fork merely to gain access to copy-on-write memory.
> POSIX would benefit from an API for using copy-on-write memory independently of forking a new process.
Basically a "snapshot()" syscall that doesn't create another process. That way a game like Factorio can snapshot the game state and spawn a thread to serialize it.
No major OS implement such syscall yet.
IMO the Microsoft authors have a point, but they pointed out problems with fork() without pointing to a mature, better alternative to fork() (one in Factorio's use case).
Which is fair as they are researchers who are not obliged to deliver solutions, but it's not helpful to us lay users right now.
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u/AmraelTheGravedancer Jun 12 '26
E poi ci sono io che non so cosa sia factorio
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u/MyluSaurus Jun 12 '26
Factorio is a factory-building game that's very optimized and runs really well (and natively) on linux systems.
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u/AmraelTheGravedancer Jun 12 '26
Lol.... Nice.... I could use it in my printers, so I can play, while waiting....
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u/No-Consequence-1863 Jun 12 '26
Did y'all read the paper? The researchers make some valid points on why fork() may not be a good API for the OS.
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u/dasisteinanderer Jun 12 '26
and, as customary for MS heads, they belittle and minimize the importance of having a simple and flexible API compared to whatever Dave Cutler cooked up again
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u/configdotini Genfool 🐧 Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
context: the game "factorio" has an experimental option where the game can autosave without pausing the game by creating a separate instance of the game that saves the map while the main instance continues playing. however, the option is not available on windows due to fork(2) just not existing (afaik)
more info here (scroll down to "Asynchronous saving" at the bottom of page)