KernelTrap Talks WIth GNU/Hurd Developer Neal Walfield

An Anonymous Coward writes: "One of the GNU/Hurd developers, Neal Walfield, was recently interviewed by KernelTrap. Nice read."

Comments

Re:Isn't GNU/HURD redundant?

[brunes69]

Didn't you know? There's already a GNU OS. It's also been called "Emacs" in some circles.

Re:Interesting

[aardvarkjoe]

It makes me think of Windows 95. When I first installed it on a 486/33, it seemed huge, bloated and slow. If I run it now on a PIII/800, it seems to be fast, lean, stripped down and almost elegant.

I'm not quite sure that's true. Win95 seemed bloated and slow on the ancient 486/25 I first used it on ... and yet, it's _still_ bloated and slow on new machines. One would think that it would be quick as lightning, and yet I still "click the start button ... drum fingers for a second..." Same really goes for both KDE and GNOME. On the flip side, Blackbox was lightning fast on the first machine I installed Linux on (a 486/66, IIRC), and it seems just as fast on my machine today.

Best explanation I can come up with is that there hasn't been any increase in processor speed in the last 5 years. I'm convinced that they hit a wall around the 386 or so, and have simply been rebranding the same chips every year or so, trusting that we'll convince ourselves that things really are going faster.