Aren't we all supposed to dream about unikernels moving forward anyway?
If I'm just using a library operating system that is linked directly into a single unikernel that merges the application code and system code, then I don't really care if I'm running on a hypervisor, on bare metal, or a host operating system. I'm only using a few system capabilities, and I'm not really taking advantage of other services running on the OS.
So I don't really care if the host OS is Linux, or Plan 9, or BSD. It just has to be UNIX-y enough to host a VM for my unikernel.
A unikernel isn't really much more than a weird system call ABI, though. There are some APIs that are better performing than standard (eg, virtio vs sockets) but that's a design issue, and operating systems can provide similarly performing apis. For example, netlink.
If I'm just using a library operating system that is linked directly into a single unikernel that merges the application code and system code, then I don't really care if I'm running on a hypervisor, on bare metal, or a host operating system. I'm only using a few system capabilities, and I'm not really taking advantage of other services running on the OS.
So I don't really care if the host OS is Linux, or Plan 9, or BSD. It just has to be UNIX-y enough to host a VM for my unikernel.