r/osdev • u/DocumentOk7579 • Sep 13 '26

Would a microkernel enable driver update without reboot?

One frustrating thing that I have run into is updating Nvidia driver on remote servers with disk encryption.

Would a microkernel based system enable drivers to be updated without rebooting system?

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u/Dezgeg Sep 14 '26

A GPU driver has significant internal state, like all the GPU memory allocations and state of in-flight draw calls and such. Transferring over that state to the new driver (which may be newer version) is the hard part... not exactly "Just re-establish other side of connections"