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RMS Says Hurd Could Be Loosed in 2002
Mark Cappel writes "According to PCWorld, RMS said in an interview in India that Hurd will see the light of day this year."
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I used to follow HURD till about 3-4 years back than
lost all interest. There are some very special
features that you get with HURD, but now with UML
some of them are being fulfilled by Linux. I hope
the best for HURD, but I don't see it gaining much
mindshare in the near future.
If you think why MS is so ubiquitous, it is because
of their persistence. They will do whatever
possible to sell a software. If still they fail
they try again again and again. If they fail they
will find a way to force it down your throat.
That is what RMS is. He is persistence. If it
wasn't for his persistence, there wouldn't be a GNU
project. And detractors may say what they like but
Linux wouldn't exist without GNU (I don't agree to
GNU/Linux). People who can't see the benefit of
GNOME, must understand that it was GNOME which
forced QT to reduce restrictions in their license
so that you can trust that QT won't be taken away
in the future.
HURD is a unique product, although I don't agree
with the cathedral like way they produce it but
still will be one product which can compete with
Linux in the future. Its only a matter of time,
when the system is made more efficient.
In an attempt to answer all the 'why not just use Linux?' questions, have a look at the man's explanation of it.
... :-)
Basically, Linux wasn't around when Hurd was started, and they believe it is different enough to complete/compete despite the grand rise of Linux. (Remarkably honest & non-political notes by RMS)
Good luck to them - i hope it succeeds (we can't have Linux becoming a monopoly
Pay attention to vocabulary:
"The Hurd" (with the article) or "the GNU Hurd" is the set of servers that run on the top of a micro-kernel (GNU Mach for now, OSKit Mach soon, maybe L4 latter). The pair: The Hurd + -kernel can be used as a remplacement of the Linux kernl
GNU is the full operating system created by the GNU project. It contains The Hurd and many other things. It can be called GNU/Hurd to avoid confusions.
The Hurd is not a system, it's not a micro-kernel, it's not a kernel, it's a set of servers that run on top of a -kernel to replace a standard kernel.
Yes, unlike Darwin, Hurd is Free, not just source-avaliable.
It'll be interesting to see how Hurd performs against Linux once it's more mature. I strongly suspect that Linux will kick Hurd's arse performance wise, but that remains to be seen. Another Free operating system is of course always welcome.. :)
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
So, they built a (arguably) better OS based on BSD license, and called it FreeBSD. Then it forked and we have NetBSD, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD.
Despite the great beauty of FreeBSD, and the vastly developed environment (countless ports that work flawlessly, providing users with easy to install and run applications), FreeBSD is not doing as well as Linux.
Why? Buzzword Bingo. It's hard enough to compete with Microsoft to get a persons attention, and convince them to try a new OS. And, when the average person looks for a "alternative" Linux is the most obvious choice. FreeBSD gets only a small fraction of that attention, even if it is technically equivalent (or better in some people's opinion).
IMHO, this is why HURD may fail. It's not because it won't be a good alternative, or because it will be technically inferior, because those will likely be untrue. Hurd will probably be competitive, but how will it get a market share?
Linux will make vast roads to having a real-time kernel, embedded, etc... (QNX like), long before Hurd is ready. So, add the lack of press, lack of interest, and slow development, I can't help but think it will not see much success. How can you not see it in a similar light to the BSDs, even if the licensing is different?
>doing much of interest.
Yes, but linux+GNU tools doesn't do all that much of interest, either, untill you add the other things we take for granted . .
Which, of course, is why when most people say "linux", they *don't* mean "linux kernel and GNU tools," but also perl, sendmail, X, and a gaggle of others . .
hawk
No, American programmers are getting shafted by the US Immigration and Naturalization's failure to make sure that immigrant professional wages don't crush citizens' professional wages, by limiting the number of foriegn professionals are allowed to enter our market. The flood of Indian programmers has hit the American programmer's paycheck, and we now have CCNA and MCSE NetAdmins making more money than programmers with a B.S. or M.S. in Comp Sci. I do agree with you though, force the employers to pay the Indians reasonable wages, so the rest of us can compete with them. If you can get an Indian Java programmer for 20,000 or less, and an American programmer is looking for something in the 50-70k range, there's no competition. If everyone was paid in the same range, then you could decide between an American with a B.S. in CompSci, or the Indian programmer. I'm not a racist, and I don't hate Indian programmers, but it's a fact that they ARE flooding our market. The same way laws work to protect American companies from 'dumping', and tariffs are applied to imports (like the steel issues recently), the INS is supposed to protect the economy from a flood skilled laborers that dilute our labor market.
Before anyone flames me about immigrants' rights, no one had a RIGHT to immigrate here. Most of these programmers aren't immigrants anyway, they just get granted work rights because they're professionals and companies will sponsor them.
So here's a guy who's been to about a hundred countries, lectures in French when he goes to France, regularly talks in person with influential people all over the world, and I'll bet that there are a significant group of people who not only have never been out of their own country but don't even have a passport, but find this joke funny.
RMS needs to realise that people just say "Linux" because its the closest replacement to "Unix". but people always refer to "Unix" to mean a whole collection of tools and libraries, the same as GNU/Linux. so it's an understandable (mis)use of language.
when the rain comes, they run and hide their heads. they might as well be dead.