Unikernels were hard. key word: were
The article discusses the resurgence of unikernels, arguing that previous technical barriers to their adoption have been largely overcome. It suggests that modern development tools and AI-assisted coding have made unikernels a viable security-focused alternative to traditional operating systems.
Why it matters
Unikernels offer a potential shift in cloud infrastructure security by minimizing the attack surface of applications.
Justin Cormack, who worked on MirageOS back in the day, called me at the pub to talk about why unikernels are coming back. The friction that made them hard is gone, the operating system is design debt, and if you care about security you should seriously consider them.
Justin Cormack, who worked on MirageOS and Unikernel Systems back in the day, has been noticing what I've been noticing: people are discovering (or rediscovering) unikernels again. He's running a series of conversations on the topic for his newsletter, and I was first up. He emailed me, and five minutes later I was talking to him from the pub with a stein of beer in hand. We went deep on Mirage, Orleans, Haskell, Nix, Cursed and a whole lot more.
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