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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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The Hurd is finished?
The end must surely be nigh!
I am looking forward to running a Hurd system. "Hurd" is much easier to pronounce than "GhNU slash Linux" is. I think that Torvalds guy should give more consideration to how he names his creations, like the GNU guys do.
Oh, wait.
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.
RMS said in an interview in India that Hurd will see the light of day this year.
Emergency power to the sarcasm deflectors !
As we all know, by now, Apple's OS X is also based on the Mach microkernel. The foundation of OS X is Darwin. Darwin is Open Source and it runs under x86 PCs and of course Apple hardware. So my question is quite simply, how is Hurd different? Is the Darwin kernel architecture not OO-based? Does Hurd bring other advantages to it that Darwin doesn't already have?
"One of the reasons we are looking forward to having the GNU system finally available from the GNU Project is that it will be only free software," Stallman added.
Doesn't Debian only include Free (as in speech) software???
Quoting the article: "Linux is a kernel, and now we have our kernel, which is an alternative to Linux, and they both work in the context of the overall GNU system, as the kernel alone won't run without the rest of the system ," he said.
Linux alone actually runs quite well, though not doing much of interest. But by adding only a few (non-GNU, I believe) tools to the kernel, it is quite capable as, for example, a router.
I read the following in the article:
"In India there are a number of people who are capable of seeing free software as an ethical and social issue, whereas in many parts of the world very few people recognize the ethical and social issues, and they are more interested in the practical benefits of today's free software," Stallman said.
I think it has nothing to do with India in specific. It has more to do with that getting people to pay software when they do not have the money is the issue.
Last time I checked Indian programmers want to be paid just as much as everyone else on this planet. It is just right now that Indian programmers are getting shafted and paid less than they rightfully deserve.
While the FSF does not preclude getting paid, it makes it DAMM difficult. If you look at the past Slashdot arcticles you can see a good business model is what makes sense. I would like the FSF to consider the fact that people have mortgages, children and college.
Sure there are companies that are doing ok. IE Redhat, but Redhat is one of the few. The rest are having problems as witnessed by the slashdot articles. Philosphical arguments are easy when you are feed, clothed and have a roof over your head.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
As someone who is not familiar with the HURD project (other then: it's a GPL'd Kernel?) can someone provide us with a brief list of some of the cool features/immediately noticable advantages HURD should provide? (This isn't intended as flamebait - I just seriously couldn't dig up much info in plain english)
I bet $150 Hurd will not be released this year..
Place your bets here!
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Crikey. Don't post on level 2 when you're just too dumb/tired to understand what he's saying.
Quite simply : In the west, we only care about linux because it's cheap. In India, they care because it's Free as in Speech and they consider that a good thing.
Stop the brainwash
Hurd is (currently) built on top of Mach and provides the major operating system services you'd expect in a POSIX-like kernel. Mach is a microkernel and doesn't provide any (well, doesn't provide many) of this kind of thing itself. It acts as a kind of supporting frame for the processes that do the real work.
KMSMA (WWBD?)
The Hurd...provides a rather complete and usable operating system today. It is not ready for production use, as there are still many bugs and missing features.
Complete. Usable. Not Ready. Buggy. Missing Features.
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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
I'd say eleven years and counting is "ahead".
It really makes you wonder why the project hasn't died. From the article I really can't see anything that the hurd will offer that the linux kernel does not already offer. And with linux already as widespread as it is, it doesn't seem like the Hurd has much of a market.
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What's the name?
According to tradition it's got to have a name. More X's, the better. Not three X's thou.
So my bet would be Hurdix. (No GNU, because there's no non-GNU hurd..)
fucktard is a tenderhearted description
The Hurd uses a microkernel architecture, and currently runs over Mach. In this architecture, operating system services are provided by "servers" that provide those services to conventional applications. For instance, there's a "file server" which apps communicate with for access to files.
KMSMA (WWBD?)
As a programmer making fair wages with fair outgoings and a family I can't (or won't?) afford windows + office.
I do contribute to OS software and am happy to use Linux and Open Office along with Lilypond etc etc and all my other favourites.
So OS helps me, the guy with family to put through school.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Right Here.
Best Slashdot Co
"RMS said in an interview in India that Hurd will see the light of day this year."
But RMS won't. He hasn't been out of his cave since 1986.
I think the point of this excersise is,(and was), to build a 100% free,(as in speech), os.
,When the linux kernel came along this got side tracked.I am glad Hurd is near completion as I will soon be able to work and play on a completely free os.
,"..less mature, and less feature rich proejct ..",which is free,(as in speech),than a feature filled os which is not 100% free.
"Welcome to the GNU Project web server, www.gnu.org. The GNU Project was launched in 1984 to develop a complete Unix-like operating system which is free software: the GNU system. (GNU is a recursive acronym for ``GNU's Not Unix''; it is pronounced "guh-NEW".) Variants of the GNU operating system, which use the kernel Linux, are now widely used; though these systems are often referred to as ``Linux'', they are more accurately called GNU/Linux systems. "
This was stallman's intention right from the begining
This is not about revenge.I will be very happy to use a
_________________________________________________
"what exactly are the new/interesting features...that you'll be providing the 'community'?"
Who says they have to provide anything to anyone? Maybe they are doing it because (*gasp*) they WANT to.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
I installed this version of Debian Hurd (id=51) months ago and it is quite stable (I'd say more than windows95) so, because of its elegance, the few remaining minor problems should be fixed soon.
So, whoever called this vapourware should at least verify their sources : Hurd is no more confidential.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
The HURD is a Hird of Unix Replacing Daemons. Clearer?
What's a Hird? Hurd of Interfaces Representing Depth. There, all clear now?
Seriously, the HURD is a microkernel system. Instead of having a (relatively) big kernel that provides all the necessary services, a microkernel system has a very minimal kernel and provides most of the services a kernel usually provides by way of userspace daemons (the Hird of Unix Replacing Daemons) instead.
Academic CS guys have been saying microkernels are the way of the future for years now. Mac OS10 runs on the Mach microkernel. Windows NT was supposed to be a microkernel, although by the time it actually made it to the light of day so much had been stuffed back into the kernel for performance reasons it really isn't one.
The number one drawbacks to microkernels, as the above might lead you to guess, is performance. On a single processor system expect a microkernel to lag significantly performancewise in comparison to a monolithic kernel with equal optimisations. That's a result of the fact that so many things we think of as system services are user processes instead, and of the communication overhead involved (message passing between components is used extensively, and this is not the fastest way to handle things on a uniprocessor system.)
Why do I say "on a uniprocessor system?" Well, some of that overhead becomes unavoidable anyway when you move to a multiprocessor system, and a microkernel is inherently multithreaded, so it's quite friendly to multiprocessor systems. So as multiprocessor systems become more common the performance gap may drop.
Currently the HURD is a collection of servers that run on top of the GNU Mach microkernel. Does that sentence make more sense for you now? I hope so.
The GNU Mach microkernel is something of a performance dog, but at this point the HURD is still at a development only stage anyway so it doesn't much matter. It will probably be moved to an L4 microkernel instead before it's used in production machines. The L4 family gives much improved performance. Still slower than a highly tuned monolithic kernel like Linux, particularly on uniprocessor systems, but much closer.
So if microkernels are slower, why use them at all? Well, they have the potential to bring an entire new world of flexibility to computing. Imagine having different "personalities" - different collections of "kernel service" daemons, so that your box can run Linux, BSD, Solaris, VMS, or even Windows sessions, on the fly. Imagine being able to switch between them, or run different ones simultaneously, without having "root" privileges and without affecting other users. This is just one of the many interesting things that could be done on a microkernel system but not on a monolithic one. Another one is a system where any user can do all sorts of things that normally require root access, except for mess up other users.
None of the pre-existing systems seem to have ever really taken advantage of microkernel design - rather they just use a microkernel to emulate a single monolithic kernel (usually BSD.) However, there are some pretty incredible microkernel only tricks out there waiting to be done, and the HURD developers plan on finally doing them.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
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?
if a project isn't providing value of some sort, it's prudent to can the project. and saying they do it because they want to, but pounding the GNU/Linux marking shows that they do want their credit, even if it's not $$. these guys want a GNU system (as stated in the article) and will hold nothing back until they get it no matter how much of a drain it is.
The quick form is:
1. All system services are processes in Mach, including any form of I/O and authentication, They may be switched in/out be the administrator at will.
2. Users may create their own services that are available to themselves or to others. EX. A user can write their own encrypted filesystem that works out of a single large file in their regular home directory. When they log in, they start up their EFS server, mount the filesystem to their own process and work in it. It is not visible to anyone but themselves, and is visible to their own programs as if it was just another directory. Sound fun?
3. Network services start at low/no authority and gain authority based on the ID/password provided by the requesting client. This really reduces the threat of network service attacks. No more root exploits in FTP or HTTP or other services. (In traditional services, the server has high authority and lowers it based on ID authentication)
If these aren't enough fun, read up to see more.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
RMS said in an interview in India that Hurd will see the light of day this year
...until they've reached an agreement to call it GNU/Hurd or GNhUrd.
"I would like the FSF to consider the fact that people have mortgages, children and college. "
.Should soup kitchens which feed the poor stop so that the poor man who runs a soup shop in the slums can have more business?
,teach him to fish and he can feed himself for a lifetime.
How is that a problem? YOU do not HAVE to write free software, no one is making you.
"Philosphical arguments are easy when you are feed, clothed and have a roof over your head"
So what are you saying? Are you saying that people who CAN and are in a postion to write free software should stop so that people in india or else where for that matter can write non free equivelents of what the fsf write presumebly on propritory expensive non free alternatives which would cost the Indians alot more
I would say that free software is more of a benifit to india than a hinderance because it gives indians tha ability to write and hence sell that ability to write software. If all os's and software development enviroments were propriatory the indians would not be able to afford to pay for them.I think your argument and your logic is silly and not well thought out, explain to me How
india would benifit more from there not being freesoftware in the world as oppossed to how it is benifting right now from freesoftware being available.
You can give a man a free meal and he will not be
hungry for a day
_________________________________________________
Unix-systems are similar enough that a switch from one to another is usually practical. Everything else is preference or application specific.
I agree that mind share is a big deal, and often trumps technical capability. The Hurd, though, is an interesting beast. It has some potential applications where Linux isn't as useful (currently). Like the BSD Jail, Linux will either add those capabilities or will not be as useful. Unlike Jail, some of the capabilities of Hurd come from the design of Hurd, so mimicing them under Linux will likely be awkward or impractical.
Either way, it should spur more evolution in modern Unix-style systems, so it's worth it for that reason alone.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
"FreeBSD is not doing as well as Linux. Why? Buzzword Bingo."
;)
No, it's down to hardware driver lack of support.
When I can't install FreeBSD on my Vaio but NetBSD works, I don't use FreeBSD.
When the Linux kernel recognises my dodgy eetherpro/100B("Sony") NIC, but the Hurd doesn't, I run Linux.
The fun question is: if the source is openly available for linux to support a given bit of kit, would someone want to take the code and use it gratuitously (munging licensing arrangements as need be) or do they want to preserve independence and duplicate effort? The latter has the advantage of providing alternatives but doubles the creating and debugging effort. Not to mention, I'm a lazy fellow as well.
More and more I think we're heading for a different singularity: modularity. "Kernel by Hurd, userspace by netbsd, hardware.networking by linux", you name it.
Now the Openness of Source more or less allows this, how about some cross-OS distributions?
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
"no matter how much of a drain it is."
A drain on what? The community? No, they don't owe the community anything. Themselves? They can drain themselves if they want to. They are free to work on whatever project they like. If you benefit, fine. If you don't, tough.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
Hi,
I am happy to see so much interest in the Hurd, even though most of the comments seem to be negative. Let me try to clear up some facts, that hopefully make it clearer what the Hurd is about.
The Hurd was started before Linux was started. So, the Hurd was not a knee-jerk reaction to Linux, GNU/Linux or whatever else. Linux steadily grew, and many people contributed to it, but few contributed to the Hurd. And everybody is happy that we have a very reliable and high-profile free operating system, GNU/Linux, today.
But there are still reasons to continue development of the Hurd. First, it is not, like Linux, an reinvention of Unix, it is a complete redesign. From scratch, essential system services were identified as independant from the rest of the system and put as a seperate program into user space. Care was taken not to force system code to the user. And care was taken to allow the user to replace system services with his own implementation, or extend the system by new services.
So the Hurd consists not of a single kernel, or a single microkernel plus a monolithic server (like Darwin), but it consists of a microkernel plus a dozen and more system servers, plus an independant number of user servers. The authentication model allows the servers and client applications to communicate without prior mutual trust. This design is what makes the Hurd technically enthralling and _completely_ different from any other free operating system kernel in existance. (There are some other systems build like that VSTa and sawmill for example, but they are much less developed than the Hurd).
The Hurd system has thus a mroe complex design than the Linux kernel, for example. Sure, the Linux kernel is not easy to understand. You have all the scheduling, memory management, the driver framework, the virtual file system layer. In the Hurd, you have all that plus a lot more. Many interfaces that are internal in the Linux kernel are external in the Hurd, and accessible by the user. So much more care had to be taken in the design of the Hurd, so it is much harder to get to usable results, because the design had to come before the implementation.
Also, the many concepts, and the new way to think about operating system services set forth consequently in the Hurd, make up a higher barrier to entry for new developers, who have to learn a lot more things before they can make significant contributions than in other software projects. I will not go into the technical advantages of this design here, because that would take too long, but there are many interesting things you can do (as an unprivileged user) in the Hurd you can't do in other systems (or can't do that easily and naturally, eg profitably).
But there are other reasons beside technical advantages that can draw your attention to the Hurd, and they are not related to naming GNU/Linux GNU/Linux. The Linux kernel consists of code from an unknown number of developers, and an equal number of copyright holders. This means two things: The license for the copyright, GPL version 2, can never, ever be changed anymore. Now, you might think of it as a great thing. But licenses need to be changed to adopt to new laws and new technical developments. Software will be used in areas it was never used before (like web services). So, sometimes it is important to update the license of a program, just as you update the software itself. The GPL version 3 is in preperation, and the Linux kernel will not be able to take advantage of its protection.
There is another problem with many copyright holders: Depending on the country you are in (definitely in the US), it becomes very difficult to defend the license in front of the court. I am not a lawyer, but Eben Moglen is, and he has told us before about the difficulties to enforce the GPL 2 on the Linux kernel. So far he has succeeded, but as the FSF is not the only party that has copyright on parts of the Linux kernel, it is much more difficult to enforce the license than, let's say, for gcc. Add to that the fact that Linus explicitely allowed binary-only modules, and you are in muddy water.
A complete operating system, of which the FSF is the only copyright holder, with the FSF's commitment to free software, is a huge strategic advantage for the upcoming battle against world's IP exploitation.
So, the Hurd does exists for two reasons: First, it does something that no other free software does, for which there is a real need. And, it cannot be done by building on other free software, for both technical and legal reasons.
For more information, please visit http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html, and checkt he FAQ and the introduction material in the Documentation section.
Thanks,
Marcus Brinkmann (marcus@gnu.org)
Another very important reason why Linux does better is that there is a lot of (mainly commercial) software that is distributed only as an RPM and which won't run at all under FreeBSD. Where I work we where running FreeBSD on all our unix boxes until recently. We decided to start using SAPdb as our database. It's GPL, but compiling it is hell but there is a perfectly working RPM distribution of it. So now were running Redhat on all boxes....
0x or or snor perron?!
If you are really concerned about it you might try reading this thread. I really don't know enough about it to comment myself, other than to note that it was claimed to be a microkernel, but some have claimed that, like NT, it had so many non-microkernel performance hacks done to it that it really wasn't.
And I agree, it did (does, development is closed but you can still run it) run pretty nicely.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Hurd will see the light of day this year.
Which is more than can be said for most of the people reading this ....
I see through your clever ploy! No $150 for you! Now go away and don't post, 1 year!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Being compiled with GCC doesn't make it a GNU application. I suspect that the majority of Linux systems use LILO, not GRUB. There are plenty on non-GNU shells, I personally use zsh as my shell of preference. I suspect very few routers run X, never mind a desktop system.
I am aware of the licensing, blah blah blah, on the HURD, but can someone summarize the technical advantage of HURD or Linux or Darwin? Are there any comparisons between this kernel and other POSIX-standard OSes?
In short, aside from licensing and feeling good about themselves, why should one use this?
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
That's great, I'm always interested in something new. But my concern is that in all these comments and articles, I haven't heard (or should I say hurd) of any software, a windowing system? Can unix apps be compiled for HURD? What's the story on this?
T
The Linux-support somehow doesn't work with SAPdb. Had some problems with linux-java-binaries and other stuff as well. We can get it installed but that's about it; weird segfaults, race-conditions etc etc. SAP doesn't give any real support on the GPL SAPdb so that wasn't an issue:P By the way - the G400 has been replaced by the G450 which doesn't have a working TV-out in mplayer because matrox won't release the specs or something like that:(
0x or or snor perron?!
Correct use of the word "loose"! Rejoice!
hyacinthus.
Need I say more?
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
but pounding the GNU/Linux marking shows that they do want their credit
/. boards understand what the GPL means, then consider that in reference to GNU/Linux. Everyone of us (mostly) likely understand what the GNU/GPL part is talking about (again - that whole "Freedom" thing)... now consider your family, your coworkers, your neighbours - they just might have heard of Linux (*maybe*). They almost certainly not heard of "GNU/Linux" - and they most CERTAINLY dont understand the Freedom that RMS is talking about.
I dont think its the "peer respect" that FSF (RMS) is looking for when they 'pound' the "GNU/" moniker. I think, and Ive read RMS saying this, that to leave off the "GNU/" prevents people from learning about Free(dom) software and the Freedom that GPL/FSF/GNU provides.
When you consider that most everyone on
RMS demands the "GNU/Linux" moniker because it is this "Freedom" he is trying to spread, when the media skip it, they take the easy way out - not providing the public with the knowledge of the Concept of Freedom Software.
It isnt a "Im responsible, look at me, give me the credit" plea from RMS its the "Wait a minute, you have to tell people about the Freedom, and ethics of Sharing that has to be considered, that has given birth to GNU/Linux." Without this, GNU/Linux would not exist - it is a subtle but absolutely NON-TRIVIAL difference.
"No official OpenBSD ones available for free; you buy CDs to support OpenBSD."
;)
;)
There is a boot floppy image in the regular tree. mkisofs takes a `-b' and `-c' parameter. You really *can* do the obvious thing - worked for me
(I suppose it helps if you have another machine capable of running mkisofs on which to perform the download, of course?
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Quite wrong (rather completly actually). BSD license is NOT a safe haven for businesses to *share* commodity code. It does a company a disservice to add value that can be repackaged/modified/hidden by their competitor. BSD's failure is UNIX's failure. GPL licenese allows a company to add value knowing that a 3rd party cannot *ever* remove that value via repackage/modify/hide.
IMHO GPL is always the better license.
Any company that plans to make money entirly upon software sales is doomed to failure. 60-80% of software cost is maintenence. So the value position in software is to sell SUPPORT contracts. You can give/sell the software *at cost* and still make more on support -- even if the software is so perfect as to never need any support at all.
Businesses that use the software don't have any trouble making money from GPL software. It saves spending on other things. They hire programmers to build applications for internal use. Some of these will also be distributed, but most won't be. And most of the one's that are won't be of much interest to anyone except the business partners of the original business.
.. I admit I'm not sure about this. And I'm also not sure of the significance. KDE seems to have organized itself around the projects first, and not gotten support until after they had a working version, and Debian is still independant, then there's Linus...
Don't think of the "software house business". That is one that isn't well supported by the GPL. But software consultants are. And the consultants can do a sort of "software house business" on the side, largely as advertising. And non-computer businesses (both small and large) are. A part of the problem is that much of the way that we look at how things should operate is based on how they operated under a monopoly system, i.e., "I'm the only one who has the right to distribute this program which does this wonderful thing! So buy it from me now! (see attached list of resellers with attractive markups)". But that's not the kind of model that the GPL supports. Perhaps you can make it work. Red Hat seems to be able to, even all they can sell is the right to use their name. But not many will. It's the wrong model.
The GPL systems work best with the assumption that people (and businesses) do things largely for their own use, and that software can then be shared without much cost, so why not do so? You've already built it, your costs are sunk. And then you don't need to start your next project from ground zero. You have access to free compilers, editors, etc., and there's lots of code lying around, some of which you may be able to adapt to your own ends. And then you can share that back. If you are a consultant, this lets you work more cheaply at the cost of not being able to effectivly mass-market your result. (Or you can avoid using the pre-built code and just use the tools. Then with a bit of care you can even mass-market your work, but someone else will probably be able to create something roughly equivalent for a lot less work, so don't expect to make too much that way.)
The GPL system is really the antithesis of the star system. Most of the real stuff is done by small groups without the need for a lot of capital. Not only small companies can contribute, but even lone individuals can. Or they can join together into loosely structured teams. True, really large projects, like Mozilla, tend to need full time support staff. I understand that most of the work on Mozilla was by paid employees
.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I'm just asking.
sulli
RTFJ.
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.
Close but no cigar. Despite what Mad Mundie et al say about the BSD licence, is it the case that it just is NOT all that commercially attractive?
The GPL is just a better licence. It's fairer to developers, and in a bizarre way, that makes it more attractive to commerce. Keeping the developers happy keeps the software coming.
GPL is also more resitant to forks, as anyone who wants to distribute has to publish source. Forks are bad, mmmkay?
And anyway, the GPL is practically a religion these days. You don't want to cross God, do you?
"I had to burn the ISOs at home"
;)
;)
Aside: If they have a restrictive firewall but let you bring your own software in through the front door, don't you think they have a slightly strange idea of security?
"lost 'marketshare' due to restricting ISOs."
In my case, they lost marketshare due to having portmapper started by default and yet claiming to be "the most secure BSD". OK so it might not be vulnerable *today* - but there's such a thing as asking for it.
WEll, just in case you wanted a "technical" reason for trying-not-to-slag OpenBSD, that is
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
I think that's a bit harsh, eh? If anything, Apple has stricter standards to some of their products, compared to GNU, simply because the products are meant for the consumer rather than the programmer who can stand to piddle around with something until it works. The deviations around GCC recently (2.95/96->3.0) are a prime example of that. I'm still downloading projects that require a particular version of GCC because the earlier version doesn't support something correctly (often templates) or the later version breaks something that was supported earlier. Needless to say, that is a royal pain in the neck. Also, considering OS X contains a few GNU products, you can say that for this product at least, they've inherited whichever standards GNU has :)
Perhaps true...except for games. Games are not a "make money on support" area. They are hard, code-intensive, creatively challenging (if you care about good artwork and story) and are not ammenable to support. For SOME games you might be able to sell cheap and then make money on network play...something like a battle.net, but this is ONLY for games that are multiplayer (not all are or should be) AND liked by many.
Game companies are made or broken by software SALES, nothing else. You want games, you must pay for them or they just don't come.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Do we really need more fragmentation?
rpm vs. deb, Gnome vs. KDE... and now Linux vs. HURD? All this is doing is making the free software platform more convoluted. Now you have to pick a kernel, and it has to be one that's compatible with the apps you're running, and the hardware you're running...
Linux is finally establishing itself as the 'Single Unix' panacea that the unix world has been trying to achieve for 20 years. Now the HURD comes out and they expect to fragment things again? No way.
With the exception of geeks who like to tinker with something obscure, HURD is going nowhere. Linux has won, and with good reason: solid engineering, liberal distribution terms, and a project leader who isn't an asshole. Let's focus on making the Linux platform better, not on fragmenting the free software world even further. The "I Can Do That Better" attitude is our biggest liability.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Lots of people out there can only recognize the cute penguin and don't give a dam about what's a kernel or if it's a monolythic kernel or not.
The Hurd has this bizarre logo that doesn't really appeal to non-techies and will have a hard time seducing the girl friends of the geeks around the world causing a slow adoption of the kernel by people without a partner.
If Hurd wants to succeed in Japan for example, where "kawaiiiii" (means: sooooo cute) is a way of life, I urge RMS to hire a designer and work on this mascot symbol ASAP. And promise me, no more flowchart diagram please!
PPA, the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
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.
Many GPL developers get paid. Many do not. I spoke about keeping them happy. And, seemingly, there are a lot of happy GPL developers out there. Dare I say more than BSD developers?
But I do take your point re zealots. GPL does seem to inspire a fair bit of that. Still, there are probably quite a few BSD zealots out there, and we need not talk about Micros~1.
Seriously -- VSTA has a much cleaner design than the HURD and far superior runtime speed. It's based on some rather different design decisions (favoring being Right over being backwards-compatible where the two conflicted strongly), but is just generally Good Stuff.
If the HURD increases interest in microkernel-based OSen, good for it -- I *like* my drivers running in userspace! (heckuvalot easier to write and debug that way, no? heck -- that means one can write a prototype driver in Python before putting together the final version in C; let's see 'yall do that in Linux!)
Admittedly, it's not nearly as close to being end-user-ready as the HURD, but for folks doing embedded systems work (or who want a cool OS to play with), it's seriously worth looking into.
Yes, Linus will be forgotten over time, just like pretty much everyone else. The reason is that the Linux kernel will eventually run out of gas and get replaced by something else, and eventually it and its creator will just be a historical footnote.
I've tried to find this info myself, but since I don't really know what to look for, I've so far been unsuccessful.
Where can I find some good info on the advantages/disadvantages of various microkernels?
I've read many times that MACH is a rather slow/inefficient kernel.
But, I've never really read much on why this is so.
In addition, I've never read anything about other MK's out there (other than that QNX has one, etc).
I'd really appreciate some good online resources I can look up so I can educate myself on the matter.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Seems strangely appropriate for a microkernel-based system :-).
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Am I the only one who got all teary-eyed reading that? I mean, we get wrapped up in September 11, the Israel / Palestine thing, AIDS, and all our own personal tragedies. And we forget that somewhere, there are forgotten developers toiling away, emotionally devastated and relegated to obscurity because people unfairly call their work by the wrong name.
Oh, the humanity.
-b
Interestingly, a paper linked from the L4 pages describes how Linux was ported to L4:
For L4Linux, the AIM benchmarks report a maximum throughput which is only 5% lower than that of native Linux. The corresponding penalty is 5 times higher for a co-located in-kernel version of MkLinux, and 7 times higher for a user-level version of MkLinux. These numbers demonstrate both that it is possible to implement a high-performance conventional operating system personality above a -kernel, and that the performance of the -kernel is crucial to achieve this.
They go on to say that they were able to get complete binary compatibility, including kernel device drivers, and were running X happily.
This kind of thing, coupled with the recent user-land filesystems in Linux, makes it look like Linux may eventually become a micro-kernel by the `back-door'...
You can do HTTP installs of OpenBSD, and if your firewall blocks HTTP then you might as well just unplug your net connection.
ISO standard 8601 is what you're looking for.
I don't know about money - I expect there's a standard for that too, but the site I had bookmarked that listed a variety of standards seems to be down at the moment. Google provided the link above.
I always use YYYY-MM-DD now, since it is the standard format, and gosh darn it, it just makes sense.
Christopher
Mozilla
This is true. However, the world has moved on without the Hurd; there is now a glut of decent free-as-in-speech operating systems out there (at least seven of which I can think of that have any kind of user base, four of which are BSD variants).
There is an instructive paralell in the world of conlangers (people who like to create languages). There are essentially two camps: the auxlangers and the artlangers. The auxlangers have Esperanto and Volapuk (and perhaps classical Latin and Arabic) as their standard bearers, while the artlanger language king is Klingon. The auxlangers create languages that they eventually expect the world to use (Esperanto is the most evangelical of these languages), while the artlangers create their languages, wouldn't mind being able to have someone else to speak them, but don't expect the world from them.
As a general rule the artlangers, the Okrands and Tolkiens, are in it for fun. The Zamenhofs, the auxlangers, are in it partly for a cause, partly to pick a fight.
While RMS has done great things, he'd be more of an auxlanger...
ObPrediction: The Hurd will get some play and probably steal a sizeable chunk of the FSF zealot market, but in large part it will be a) too complicated, b) hobbled by a community that makes Amiga fans look reasonable, and c) largely irrelevant because of the huge installed Linux/BSD base.
/Brian
the latest installment of duke nukem is ready to roll. yawn.
-
This Intel document, also available in PDF indeed states that the Intel compiler will not compile the Linux kernel, but I think the kernel could be modified to not use the GNU extensions that the Intel compiler does not support. I wouldn't be surprised it someone isn't already working on that.
Intel also claims to be interested in improving compatibility with GCC, so I think it's just a matter of time before it will work.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
"Turd"
Talk about wrong choice in potential buzzwords. If the first few "production" releases suck, everyone's going to be calling it GNU/Turd.
If only M$ had named Windows something like "Bliss", then we could call it "M$ Piss."
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
xBSD fell to the wayside because of its inferior "marketing", but its not because of "Buzzword Bingo".
A key to a sucessful open software effort is mindshare. That is what gets you driver X for your machine, and companies investing money to improve an aspect of the operating system.
xBSD, like Hurd, was around before Linux. But unlike Linux, it was not as open in terms of permitting changes to its kernel. This might have changed now , but I would guess that Linux had a 4 year head start in terms of openness of its development effort. This is what got Linux mindshare. xBSD license may also not be as attractive to some commercial developers, but I doubt this is what put xBSD in its more obscure status.
The key to a sucessful marketing effort its to get your product out there with a greater number of customers than your competition. This is what happened with Linux vs xBSD. If xBSD is to gain mindshare, it can only do it by being a demonstrably better product than Linux. This is usually a losing proposition in the marketing world.
As for myself, I went Linux over xBSD because I was certain Linux was going to "mutate" faster than the xBSD. At the time, it was more open, in terms of kernel developers and change process, so improvements were going to be incorporated more quickly than xBSD. I always knew that xBSD was better tested (it was deployed in the commercial environment years before Linux) and probably more secure. xBSD might be the better product if I was the owner of a webserver farm or some other internet based service. But since I am not the owner of such an enterprise, xBSD does not give me any feature which makes it better than Linux. It looks to be the case in the UNIX world. So unless Linux does something to kill its marketshare position, xBSD is always going to be an obscure, historical effort.
As for HURD, its a joke. Its performance will probably always be inferior to Linux and this is because of technical reasons. (Namely, that uKernels waste a lot of CPU time talking to itself every time it executes an operation, which results in a lot of context switches.) Don't get me wrong, I really like u-kernels from a design perspective. (It should allow for greater mutation than Linux.) But you have to work off its designed disadvantages with sharp, performance prioritized coding. MACH is a hippo of a u-kernel. HURD will have to replace it with something better before it can really move. (Wake me up when they replace MACH with L4, and L4 has a finished, working design.) HURD is technically inferior to Linux from a performance perspective, and its never going to get marketshare for that reason.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
The fact is, most businesses gain value from software from *using* it, not selling it. So, they will always need people to build software for them, and they'll pay for it. But the only people who win when the software is proprietary are the *few* companies who sell it (and probably relatively few of the employees of those few compaines as well).
"I can (well, almost) hear you asking yourselves "why?". Hurd will be out in a year (or two, or next month, who knows), and I've already got minix. This is a program for hackers by a hacker. I've enjouyed doing it, and somebody might enjoy looking at it and even modifying it for their own needs. It is still small enough to understand, use and modify, and I'm looking forward to any comments you might have."
:)
0 54 106.4647%40klaava.Helsinki.FI)
This was in 1991
(http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=1991Oct5.
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
In the case of uptime, you have shown the BSD's to be running longer without reboot. However, that does not prove they are more widly excepted in any way.
According to your logic, no one at all is running Windows, so why bother even mentioning it? Problem is, you haven't proved that, you only proved FreeBSD users (and *BSD users in general) less likely to reboot. It does not naturally follow that there are more users overall.
It is really interesting to see Linux users of all people berating HURD for whatever perceived faults it has. This of course has come to be the expected response. For those of you berating HURD, do you realize what operating system you're a proponent of? A couple years ago if you said Linux someone thought you had sneezed. It is really ridiculous to sit back and spout off about why HURD will fail. If someone says the same of Linux you mod them down to -1 or piss your pants and curse their immortal soul. For supposedly intelligent and enlightened folk you're pretty stupid.
I see HURD as a pretty cool system, though I am bias as I'm a fan of micro-kernel designs by the virtue of being more configurable than monolithic kernels. If you don't like a component, you know what interfaces it uses so you can go and write your own to better suit your needs. You could write a scheduler and memory management system that was more specific to the needs of a web server or database or graphical workstation or what have you. That strikes me as particularly extensible and flexible, something which is a tenet of Free Software. HURD of course isn't perfect and could have gone with a faster MK like L4 but Mach was the big deal MK wise at the time so it was designed around it. It could be ported or rewirtten entirely for L4 which may actually happen if it hits real production quality. If it does see the light of day this year, a day on which much money will exchange hands, it will have a nice system to sit on top of it in the form of Debian HURD. It would give HURD a definite validity, as much at least as Debian has in the eyes of its users and proponents. Shit most people could use Debian on top of HURD and not know they weren't actually running Linux.
On the topic of the WindowsNT MK, it really is a micro-kernel design but with a few modifications to the implimentation in order to get better performance at the cost of modularity and in some cases stability. The NT Executive instead of passing everything through the kernel to the hardware the I/O manager talks directly to the hardware. The Executive Services are also running in kernel space rather than user space so a problem with them can lead to the kernel locking up. The source of most BSoDs in WinNT are these direct links to hardware and the device drivers running in kernel space. A fucked device driver leads to the entire system going down in some cases. I imagine Microsoft went this route with NT because it was originally designed to run on the 386 which was a slow bitch when it came to context switching, a Machier kernel would have just been too dog slow on it. It isn't so much a cheap hack as it is a decision to actually get a product out the door rather than wait for hardware to improve and propogate.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I've been following the HURD kernel for a while; albeit quietly and I stopped when it seemed like it was just dead in the water that was sometime in August of last yr. I think that as of now (and because I'm not aware of anything else) the hurd kernel will only work on 32 bit archs. Therefore currently it's not really portable until the Microkernel Object Model is used for everything which last time I checked it wasn't. I think that I'll help with some documentation though.. If anyone has contrary to the above please let me know. HURD looks like it's gonna be fun.
It is arguably a stretch to call that "object-oriented" since OO has come to mean so many things besides data encapsulation (though in my view that's the most important OO feature, the part which allows you to replace the implementation at any time). But hey, it's certainly less of a stretch than Oracle calling 9i "unbreakable."
I would call a system like that degenerate. Because a system is really multiple pieces of software interoperating. With just one piece of software (Linux) running, you don't really have a system at all.
If you have a couple applications running...then you have a system but I would say it really isn't an operating system. An operating system has a programming library of some sort for code reuse, some sort of an interface, utilities to manipulate the file system (copy, delete, make directories) and in the case of Unix, utilities to manipulate text files. There is a lot more than this in a modern operating system. But of all the things that Linux needs to be a complete operating system, most of it is available as GNU software.
What sense is it to use Linux without GNU anyway? You're cutting your arm off...for what? GNU is freely available software with granted rights to use, copy, redistribute, and modify. You are also required to have access the source code by its license. In fact, thats the whole point of GNU's existance.
I say...enjoy it and don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Now that the last missing component of The GNU System will be released, we will finally get the "The GNU System" as originally described.
Will it then be okay to refer to LiGNuX as just plain "Linux"?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
what are you, some kind of mac user? Least Significant Bit goes first!
you should htons(date) if you don't like it
It's hard enough to compete with Microsoft to get a persons attention, and convince them to try a new OS.
Absolutely... it's not like some college student could ever drum up an amateur kernel in his dorm room that would ever hope to gain as much mind-share as Linux.
Oh, wait.
-Erik
And don't forget that for the longest time, the gnu.ai.mit.edu machines had no root password; anyone with an account could su to root. And of course, if you wanted an account there, all you had to do is apply for one. RMS doesn't believe in security...
It will be called GNU because it is a complete GNU system. The UI is GNU, the file system utilities are GNU, the text utilities are GNU, the text editor is GNU, and kernal will be GNU.
Isn't it sad how a completely free operating system was developed because some people were concerned that you weren't getting all the rights you should with the software you use and all you do complain about the stupid shit.
Damn you. You trolls make me angry sometimes.
You're not a kernel hacker, are you?
You've got me there. Well, I've hacked on the kernel, more like hacked it up a bit, but nothing that matters to the rest of the world. I haven't used the inline assmebly features of GCC at all.
That still doesn't stop Intel from implementing those features, so my second statement may yet happen. That would, of course, require it to have an assembler that understands the as(1) syntax.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Xurdix? How abxurd.
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
Sigh...
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Get a clue.
http://tuxedo.org/jargon/html/entry/micros1.html
micros~1
An abbreviation of the full name Microsoft resembling the rather bogus way Windows 9x's VFAT filesystem truncates long file names to fit in the MS-DOS 8+3 scheme (the real filename is stored elsewhere). If other files start with the same prefix, they'll be called micros~2 and so on, causing lots of problems with backups and other routine system-administration problems. During the US Antitrust trial against Microsoft the names Micros~1 and Micros~2 were suggested for the two companies that would exist after a break-up.
Now, it may be that this is slowly turning around. I've seen a lot of interest in Citrix, server consolidation and centralisation in general. But I don't know if we'll ever be back to the old days in any real sense.
More's the pity, really. I liked it when the entire computing population of DU (or the vast majority, anyway) were on phoebe.cair.du.edu all at once, and one could simply finger one's friends, and talk to them, and life was good and pure and simple.
If you really wanna get pissed with esr, try this unforgivable thing:
http://tuxedo.org/jargon/html/entry/W2K-bug.html
But so what? "Micros~1" is in the Jargon file (of which esr is the co-editor), and used fairly widely, is fun, and makes a valid, true point.
It is wittier and more truthful that the other one myself and others use widely "m$". Tho I find m$ a more useful abbreviation when in a hurry.
You guys seem to be humour-impaired (and satire-impaired). Take a chill pill guys.
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).
Actually, although "Buzzword Bingo" may be a part of it, Linux was actually just in the right place at the right time with the right people running the project.
The technical differences between Linux and the BSD variants aren't that great. They are both basicaly UNIX. Maybe Linux isn't in name, but in function it is well within expected variation of UNIX systems.
Could BSD replace Linux? Absolutely. Will it? I tend to doubt it. There is already a lot of work invested in getting Linux to where it is that would have to be redone for BSD.
Then there is the issues over GPL. No matter your feelings on the GPL, it may have some serious use. The power of the GPL vs other licenses was first shown to me in the Halloween documents under code forking. The basic conclusion (and ESR appears to agree) that using a license like the GPL makes code forking non advantageous, whereas the BSD scheme gets several subtly incompatible operating systems.
If I, as a developer make cool changes to BSD, I may be tempted to fork the code. I get better credit that way, and I can try to sell it (I don't morally see anything wrong with that).
On the other hand, with something under GPL, I can't close the code, so there is much less motivation to fork it.
If a company needs a change to something under the BSD license, they will change it, and perhaps sell it, trying to eke out a little extra profit. If they need something added to a GPL project, suddenly there is a large organization with resources to devote to development of the software. They can keep it inhouse, but why?
The GPL therefore leads to a larger developer base, simply because the GPL seems to inhibit code forking without prohibiting it (yes code CAN fork, but is much rarer under GPL software).
This larger developer base leads to better support, and a larger mind share. This leads to more developers choosing Linux using the GPL over BSD variants, which in turn increasees the Linux mindshare over BSD, repeating the cycle. This itself leads to the "buzzword bingo" you refrence.
Is BSD technically superior to Linux? I can't say for sure, but everyone I've ever talked to who has used and examined both seems to think so. Would I use BSD if I were running a business? Probably not. Linux has fewrer driver problems, the differences among the distributions is minimal, and the track record of Linux not having numerous subtly incompatible code forks is much better, making me more likely to use Linux. If support for my BSD variant dries up, (assuming it is an Open Source variant) I can always support it myself, but that's expensive. Support can also dry up for Linux, but which is more likely? A BSD variant falling into an unmaintained state, or Linux?
Linux has yet to truely fork. There are really only a couple of main stable kernel versions, and I expect 2.2 to go away before too long. The other versions usually get merged eventually into the main tree, so they aren't a big deal. Anyone who needs a stable mission critical system wouldn't think of running anything but a stable release, unless vital functionality was only provided by an alternative. BSD does not have his continuity of code, this is, I feel, one of the main reasons for Linux's rise.
The other main reason being Linus being the right person in the right place at the right time.
There is a civil war coming in the United States. Remember which side has most of the guns
I admitted I did not read the story because of the title...that was the whole point.
Sheesh...Loosen up or should I say losen up?
I suppose it is my fault for not including the sarcasm and grammar nazi tag.
WTH.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
BeOS never quite got to the stage where I would use it over a *nix system, Windows is by no stretch of the imagination more useful to me than it's predessorers and the hurd needs work. The apps I want to use run happily in a *nix environment, a not in a modern real time OS that an ordinary individual can afford.
OK, one is almost ready for release, and the other has been released. That is, one is around and the other one isn't. How can the one that is not "around" at all obviously have been around longer. Also, which is more important - licence or the ability to be able to actually get the code, work on it, improve it AND get valid improvements into the main release.
I suspect your post should read that development on HURD started long before Darwin was ever thought of.