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New GNU Hurd Kernel Released
Anonymous Coward writes "I don't know if there is much interest out there, but GNU Mach Kernel 1.3 was just released a couple days ago. (May 28)." Looking forward to that 2002 release...
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Its called the GNU/GNU Hurd, because its part of the GNU/System
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
That RMS will stop bugging everyone about calling it GNU/Linux though
When Debian ports it, i'll try it out. I got the last version to run. Sort of interesting, but not nearly as robust as (GNU/)Linux. apt-get install hurd ;o)
------
Random, useless fact: I type in startx entirely with my left hand.
Has anybody hurd of any possible gold releases of the HURD and/or any existing Linux vendor support (RH, SuSe)?
Takes until May 2002 to support larger than 10gig hard drives, sorry.
Quote:
28 May 2002
We are pleased to announce version 1.3 of the GNU distribution of the Mach kernel, featuring advanced boot script support, support for large disks (>= 10GB) and an improved console.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
I have been looking forward to this. Last quarter I migrated our entire server farm from a Linux/BSD/Windows ME combination (talk about support nightmares!) to Hurd, and I haven't looked back. The changelog promises new drivers (yum!) as well as support for files > 17MB and protected memory. It doesn't get any sweeter than this.
For those still using legacy systems, a little background: the GNU Hurd is the official GNU microkernel. Because it's smaller than Linux, you get faster I/O at the cost of greater instability, a tradeoff most sysadmins are quick to take.
I've used it in a production-level enterprise environment, at home on the desktop, and even on my palmtop. Even my grandmother can do the base install. This is truly the wave of the future.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
i know that apples OS X borrows the MACH kernal to use in conjunction with BSD, but my question is, is apple doing anything to help support efforts like this one? do they support the trees that they take from?
I want 2D games back.
...that the numbers given for each release (1.0, 1.3, 1.4, etc.) aren't version numbers. It's actually the average number of kernel panics per minute for this particular release.
But seriously, I've tried the Hurd, and while I can appreciate the work that's being done on it and its goals and aims, it's just not stable enough for everyday use. I'll just stick to 2.2.16 for the time being until I am convinced that there is a more stable kernel or until the Hurd matures a bit more.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
I don't think it'd matter if it was. Them GNU/html pages are pretty GNU/plain. I think that Atari 800 web server (http://kl.net/atari/) could handle the load. ;^)
(note that I'm really not making fun of the pages. Gettin' a little tired of "text via Flash" myself)
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
How does this compare to the Darwin Mach kernel?
Lies about crimes
Reminds me of a book I used to have, "Programming 68000 Assembler". This excellent book was obviously written by an old cynic, and aged very well. However, it did contain the immortal line:
"Today's powerful Unix systems often contain as much as 256k of memory"
Yes. k. Not Gig. Not even Meg. k.
Aah, for the good old days when programmers were programmers and a complete game of Chess could be fitted into a 1k ZX81. Hmmm, on second thoughts - maybe not.
Cheers,
Ian
What you fail to realize is that the Hurd developers don't CARE if you use it. They're doing this because it's fun to write operating systems (ok, maybe they're crazy -- but so's Linus). Competition with stuff that's already out there is WAY down on the list of things they worry about.
Fair point, but only really valid in a commerical context. Some people are just writing for the hell of it, and they don't care whether they've created a Windows competitor or not - they're just enjoying their code.
Cheers,
Ian
The Linux you know and love to be a Windoze killer is based on an OS design that is almost 30 years old. It has evolved through time into something that is much better than it was when it first crept out of Bell Labs, but that does not make it perfect. The HURD takes all the great parts of Linux/*Nix and adds in functionality that _nobody_ is currently offering. Just becuase Linux is great does not mean HURD cannot be 10 times better.
I don't understand for the life of me, why they didn't make the Mach kernel Open Source. Don't they realize that with the help of the Open Source community and the envied work ethic, this kernel can be used in a lot of systems.
I can see this being used in embedded banking systems that process mortgage planning calculations. That's the way of the future!
Fool. Everyone knows REAL PROGRAMMERS write in FORTRAN, which indexes arrays starting with 1. (unless explicitly specified otherwise). That is why GNU/REAL PROGRAMMERS will run their punch-card programs on the GNU/HURD.
I find it amazing that Hurd still isn't even close to being ready for production use after 10+ years of development! Even in the current release, there are a *lot* of features missing, incomplete, or just plain don't work. No character device suport, no shared memory, no dynamic library support, etc. Hurd is still very much incomplete, even now.
-- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@pobox.com PGP KeyID: 0x0BD32C9B What I'm up to: http://intuitives.mine.nu
who are you, bill gates talk about Linux in 1996?
And that car you are driving still has the same four wheels and steering wheel design. Get with the game and go for the joy stick and drive on the other side of the road. (ooops oh yeah tends to cause problems...)
While I think the goals are noble there is the theoretical and the practical. And the problem with commercial development is that the theoretical are only small pieces of a very larger commerical reality.
While LINUX has had issues regarding memory management, bigger issues are drivers, applications, support, etc, etc.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGPfreeware 5.0i for non-commercial use
[emphasis me]
well thats interesting, they're not using GNUpg
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
hopefully as the HURD evolves, RMS will be able to migrate to that and stop his hypocritical use of the Linux kernel.
How two-sided his posture turned out to be, first using Linux to create the first complete GNU system some 8 years before he could have done the same with his own kernel, then turning violently on both Linus and the Linux community for not living up to his high moral standards.
Hope he goes the HURD way and stops trying to impose himself on Linux users.
Wonder what ever happened to the demon linux project, an attempt to build a complete linux-based system with BSD utilities, as opposed to GNU.
Ah hell, we can always go the BSD route for everything I guess.
Don't fret. Stallman is very much into modelling
Nope. X11 works with my Nvidia GeForce2MX, but OpenGL is still software Mesa only as there is no DRI support for GnuMach and no third party Xservers AFAIK.
But X does work, so it isn't just text. It has X11R6 v 4.2 I believe.
Clickety Click
do you think rms would be pissed if people started using HURD, but kept calling it linux?
Mod parent up +5 there's truth hiding behind every troll.
Didn't BeOs more or less fit that criteria
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
A fix in kernel/arch/i386/?/pc-pci.c to correct problems with via by clearing bits 5,6,7 or the PCI config causes screen corruption and random crashes if you have a a VIA KL133 or KM133 based mobo, only bits 6,7 should be cleared.
There's a pstch floating about somewhere but it isn't in 2.4.19 yet becasue it's not complete enough? well anythings better than nothing.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
The site www.stallman.org is running Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) on FreeBSD.
Netcraft check of www.stallman.org
I have been fooling aroung with it for a couple years now. I have my little 1Gb Hurd partition which I occasionally boot up and experiment with. I must say that I have learned a lot by trying to compile programs under Hurd, and I actually succeded in patching Pth (Gnu Portable Threads) to get it to compile. It provides a rudimentary pthread compatibility lib while the main pthreads are still in development for inclusion into the c-library.
Even more fun is rolling your own OSKit-Mach microkernel and then running it on a serial debugger. It is fascinating to be able to single step through a running kernel, set breakpoints, view the source as it executes, look at the CPU registers, etc. I wholeheartedly recommend it to all the compsci students and future kernel hackers out there.
Clickety Click
Support for the terminal speeds B57600 and B115200 has been added.
Now I can use my new 56k modem! Pretty soon, every ISP will be using this fast new speed of modem, it will be cool! Gopher's gonna FLY on this baby!
Okay just kidding, glad to see HURD is still alive. I remember first reading about it long ago and thinking, hey, finally a modern OS. But here I am still using a monolithic kernel after all these years, and it works just fine. Good luck to the HURD folks, maybe my kids will use it. :-)
TUNES
Are you looking for fun? It's based on Lisp - that the real fun!
Features of TUNES;
Review of other systems;
Less is more !
I've looked at both the GNU and Debian websites and can't find a list of device drivers/supported devices. Does anyone have a link?
KMSMA (WWBD?)
Maybe they should co-operate more with the UnitedLinux companies -- oh wait, they might be holding some minor crudge and require it to be called UnitedLinux/Hurd then ...
Anyone willing to try out the Hurd can download some .ISO's at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/iso/hurd-H4/. They're based on Debian, and so apt-get and all that works in them.
As mentioned before, this version of Mach is about to be dropped in favor of OSKit-Mach. I don't know what the H4 CD's have (I haven't installed 'em yet) but the H3's didn't use OSKit-Mach. OSKit Mach has all the drivers that Linux 2.2 has, which is better than Mach 1.3, which iirc only has Linux 2.0's drivers.
In my brief experience with the HURD (you can only have so much fun without network card drivers) I liked it even more than Linux - using servers instead of using the kernel itself makes it more logical to, say, integrate an FTP directory into your filesystem (and indeed, this server has already been set up). settrans is lots of fun.
It's got X. It has pretty much everything you need - I could convert to the Hurd and barely lose productivity. What it's missing mostly are drivers (though OSKit should help with that, I haven't tried it).
Anyway, if you have a weekend to kill, it's a lot of fun.
H.U.R.D
Horribly
Unreasonable
RMS
Delivery of Product
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Mac OS X uses Mach, but its used differently from what GNU/Mach may use things.
IANAP, but some lackey on Linux Journal dared to write an article declaring the microkernel a dead technology in this article.
A ton of people slammed his lack of research and knowledge of microkernels, Mach, Mac OS X, or Darwin. The article is less than useful, but the responses from the irate readers explaining how Apple implements Mach (and its pretty damn clever--they take the Mach and BSD fusion to a monolithic state).
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
Lets remember that Linux itself is developed for that reason too, well according to Linus. I think the HURD is nice concept and as the broadband becomes more widespread and such, a distributed OS like this would be quite beneficial for corporations and universities. Then again theres always Amoeba and Plan 9.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
Instead of saying Gnu/Hurd, how about Gnurd?
(rimshot)
This always makes me laugh... oh that Linus. Anyway, no karma whoring have 50 anyway.
Which is a completely idiotic idea, and which is only just another example
of how absolutely and stunningly _stupid_ Hurd is.
Later on...
Trust me. The people who came up with MAP_COPY were stupid. Really. It's
an idiotic concept, and it's not worth implementing.
And this all for what is a administration bug in the first place.
In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd
people.
All by Linus found here lkml
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
sure they do care. they want an entire gnu system, and what's the point of that if nobody uses it...
Are you forgetting how apes**t RMS went when people started using the Linux kernel instead of waiting for his HURD like good little kiddies?
Why do you think he continues to insist that it be called GNU/Linux? Calling it linux alone steals his thunder and hijacks 'his' revolution.
And you can bet Bitkeeper won't be allowed near the HURD's source either.
HURD 3.Linux supposrt:
All input devices thorugh effective use of decent linux drivers
Allows you to use Apple accessories like ipod!
To be released 2012.....
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Firewire and USB work perfectly on my BSD system. Its called MacOS X.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Linus has told the GNU people OVER AND OVER AND OVER again...
Don't call it GNU Herd.
It should be called "Linux/GNU Herd" to honor all the hard work that Linus has done...
But I guess when you release a kernel that has 8 years of development and it can barely keep a machine running, you are a joke. I am sure Bill Gates is laughing his ass off.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
MACH is an old and flawed u-kernel implementation. Until HURD ports itself to a better one, HURD will always be slower than Linux and a more bug ridden OS. u-kernel OS implementations have proven to work with products like QNX, but HURD can only embarrass u-kernel advocates with its current foundation.
Its more annoying when advocates bitch and moan that "Linux is a 40 yr old design". So is about everything that is sucessful on the market. Do these guys really expects us to drop what works to what cannot work well in its current state? As is, HURD is an embarrassment to O/S purists. Its the "portable" O/S that can't even work well on ONE hardware architecture!
Its sad that HURD lacks interested, talented programmers, but its strategic stewardship is its downfall. Or the difference between a Torvalds and an RMS. I don't think HURD announcements deserve to be put on the front page of
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Why do I get the feeling that HURD will be reresected as OS@ WARP by IBM to head off Sun?
Not that RNS woudl let them if he is alive..but than again IBM has cia contracts...
WATCH OUT RMS!!!!!!!
*this is humor only any other assumption is your stupid ass fault!
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Hurd is not just a microkernel implementation but also a set of servers running on top of that microkernel providing all sorts of clever services through a unique architectural model. Darwin is also running on a Mach-derived microkernel but it is running a single server in a traditionial model.
Trust me - go invest the 5 minutes to read up on hurd, it's goals and how it is going about meeting them. VERY different from the rest of the field and potentially a revolution if it succeeds.
Oh, and the assumption that there are more drivers for Linux then IOKit? That's changing quickly as MacOS X becomes the dominant consumer Unix.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
lets see...
we would get
a HURD version 3 in 20002 that runs on PowerPC and RMS woudl be clean shaven in multi-colored shirts looking fruity
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Well, lets see. Hundreds of thousands of available programmers, Thousands of projects. that roughly divides ito hundreds of programmers per project (if they were so lucky).
Most of the time when we hear complaining about fragmentation, what it usually comes from is the speakers desire to have the programmers that are working on projects he doesn't care about to switch to projects he does care about.
Fragmentation is just another word for variety. There are multiple projects covering almost any area of software you can mention. If it were somehow determined that only one project in each area would survive and the rest would go away, then we are setting ourselves up for monopolies. We'll be trying to make one program be all things to all people. That's what we are trying to get away from.
Hurd is different from the Linux Kernel. Some things are worse (stability, speed) and some things are better (configurability, dynamic services). People will choose based on what they need, and different people need different things. you've decided what you want. Now be kind enough to allow the rest of us to choose for ourselves.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
The other day there was much controversy over RMS' insistence that "Linux" be properly referred to as GNU/Linux. A few of the remarks suggested that RMS was free to release his own kernel, which he would be free to call whatever he pleases. I was aware of the Hurd Kernel, but NOT aware that it had reached 1.x status. According to this announcement they(the Hurd development team)'re through with 1.x, and working on 2.0!
This is great, IMHO. While Hurd probabaly cannot (now) challenge the Linux Kernel, it is at least a viable project for those who are too pure to desire the compromises (non-free driver code, non-free development tools) that Linus has accepted. For those who can no longer consider Linux totally FREE, the Hurd was, is, and shall always remain FREE software, even if that does mean compromising its functionality for things like, say, LoseModems (which require proprietary DSP code).
At the very least, it adds GNU/Hurd to the list of "OSS" operating systems, and provides another reason to call "Linux" GNU/Linux: to both relate it to and distinguish it from GNU/Hurd.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
So perhaps 'gnurd' is just the perfect name for a geek OS!
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
WHAT Linux utilities? GNU, BSD and others wrote all those utilites you refer to, not Linus.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Here are some aspects of the parent post that, if you would think about them for a fricking second, clearly indicate it is a joke (although not super funny):
entire server farm from a Linux/BSD/Windows ME
even on my palmtop
faster I/O at the cost of greater instability, a tradeoff most sysadmins are quick to take.
Even my grandmother can do the base install.
- Have a picture
MACH is hardly flawed. Last I checked, NeXTStep, OpenStep, as well as that obscure new operating system you may have heard of, MacOS X, are all based on a MACH microkernel.
;)
I always thought MACH was THE microkernel. Either elaborate and convince me, or put down the crack pipe
Fair is Fari RMS..
GNU/HURD should be renamed GNU/Mach/HURD
Surely you can see this logic..without Mach you would not have Hurd..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Amen, brother.
I have plenty of common sense, I just choose to ignore it. -- Calvin
Ah RMS,
Even Custer siad ow at the Battle of Little Big Horn!
After ten years development including refusing to use email and this is the best you can do?
Sharing is not just a way of life its developmental process..Live by your own code RMS for once in your life!
Don't Tread on OpenSource
NeXTStep, OpenStep, MacOS X run on a u-kernel based on MACH. They do not run on the publicly available MACH kernel. And if you haven't noticed, OS X hardly runs like greased lightning either (except to a Mac evangelist).
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Aah, for the good old days when programmers were programmers and a complete game of Chess could be fitted into a 1k ZX81.
Or even a 4K ROM with 256 bytes of RAM. There were some uber-hackers working on that Atari 2600 chess program. Not that it played chess very well...
If you're a budding kernel hacker, or a wannabe approximation to one, look it over as an example of another way of doing things.
Any performance issues with OSX probably have more to do with admittedly slow Apple hardware combined with the Aqua rendering layer. I used to run OpenStep on a pentium and it was as performant as any other UNIX on Intel hardware.
Back in 94 I started using Linux because the HURD wasn't ready. The HURD still isn't ready. That's OK, things take time. But what's not OK is for RMS to write:
If you can ignore the facts and believe that Linus Torvalds developed the whole system starting in 1991, or if you can ignore your ordinary principles of fairness and believe that Torvalds should get the sole credit even though he didn't do that... Just consider: the GNU Project starts developing an operating system, and years later Linus Torvalds adds one important piece. Now envision the mindset of a person who can look at these events and accuse the GNU Project of egotism.Huh?
Well, no, Richard, I'm sorry. This is like saying 'this is out bridge, because we built the handrails'. Linus did the hard bit, the bit you couldn't do; and he did it brilliantly well. In fact he did three entirely different hard bits, all of which you couldn't do. The first is, he wrote an operating system kernel which worked. Now you're entitled to say that a kernel is not in and of itself an operating system, and that's true. But it is the critical structural element without which a heap of assorted parts don't constitute an operating system. So that's Linus' first achievement: a technical achievement, and a big one.
The second hard bit that Linus did which the Free Software Foundation has clearly failed to do is to evolve a development methodology which allows - encourages - very many people to take part, and which manages to integrate and exploit the fruits of all their labours. That's Linus' second achievement: a social achievement, and a big one.
But Linus third achievement is the key one, and it is key to your project of making Free Software available to ordinary people all over the world. He has brought the system to critical mass, where it's robust enough and stable enough for many people to use it, and in consequence many people are motivated to port many programs to it. This is Linus' third achievement. It's a cultural achievement, and it is an absolutely critical one without which any Free Software movement is ultimately vacuous and solipsistic.
Yes, Richard, my system is a GNU/Linux system. But it is also and equally a KDE/Linux system and an Apache/Linux system. Your contribution - the Free Software Foundation's contribution - is critical; but so is that of the Apache crew and of the KDE crew and the Debian crew and many others. And although I agree that your contributions - especially on the issues of licenses and of the underlying social principles of what we are doing - are critically important, without Linus achievement your achievement would be a footnote on the eccentric fringe of history.
Disparaging Linus not only does you no credit. It actually undermines what you are setting out to achieve. It not only distracts from the important work you are doing on defending the information commons on which we all depend: it undermines your authority to speak on our behalf.
I know that you are a great hacker. I use Emacs every day, and appreciate it greatly; much of what I do depends on things compiled with GCC. But you must realise that your philosophical work is much more important - much more critical - than your software. You were prescient in seeing the assault on the information commons and in making a stand against it, and that will be the contribution for which you will be remembered.
I have no doubt that one day the HURD will be usable. I have no doubt that the HURD, when usable, will be an interesting opererating system kernel. But the critical issue is that you, and your team, could not deliver it when it was needed, and that Linus could. It does you no harm - it diminishes you in no way - to recognise and give honour to that achievement. And it is peurile and childish to pretend that the conrtibution of the Free Software Foundation is any more important to the operating system on my desktop, on my servers, than the contribution of the Apache Foundation and its contributors or of the KDE project and its contributors. It is mean spirited to pretend that without the critical, fundamental contribution of Linus Torvalds, there would be a usable free operating system for ordinary people around the world to use.
Life is not fair. It isn't fair that the Debian KDE/Apache/GNU/Linux operating system on my desk just gets called Linux, when it comprises 796 packages by literally thousands of different authors. After all, forty or so of those packages are GNU softare. Roughly one tenth, or to put it differently, 60% of the KDE project's contribution. But, I say again, the single, critical component that welds the work of the KDE project, and the Apache foundation, and the Free Software Foundation, and hundreds of other contributors contributions into a usable whole is Linus Torvald's contribution and it's only reasonable that he should get top billing.
Grow up. Give credit where it is due, and concentrate on the parts of your work which are really critical - not just to you but to all of us. Concentrate on articulating the principles which allow an information commons in software to exist, and defending that commons from all encroachments. That is your task to do, which you do uniquely well. The honour which Linus has earned does not diminish or detract from the honour which you have earned. It is your carping, your disparagement, your evident jealousy, which detracts and diminishes your honour. Grow up and stop it.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
o0o0o Doggy! I just can't wait to get my hands dirty on a Hurd system with full networking and driver support for all my periphs!
Yessir, January 1st, 2042 is gonna be one sweet day for Hurd indeed.
Newer hardware will boot from a FireWire or USB disk with either OSX or OS 9 installed. Hell, you can probably boot OS 8.1 off a FireWire disk (why would you want to is another question).
Having the MacOS X kernel perform this task is not only idiotic but impossible, if the OSX kernel is loaded, the machine has already selected a boot disk...
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Um, yeah. More powerful... hmm. And now that Linux has been ported to everything from Pocket PCs to the Dreamcast... What's the point?
Well, here's to finally supporting 56k modems. You've only got a little further to go till you revolutionize the industry with your superior architecture *g*
How much fragmentation can the Open Source community take?
An infinite amount.
People may say it cracks with every keystroke but it just won't break.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
a paper on the Hurd, and saw: Part 2: A Look at Some of the Hurd's Beasts but read it as
Part 2: A Look at Some of the Hurd's Breasts
Nice mental image.
-yb
Anyway. Well fuckin said. I second your oppinion and put forth that my linux box is also comprised similarly.
I call it linux, because the GNU is implied.
Everyone who uses linux probably knows this. Also, if I had a Hurd system, I would likewise call it 'Hurd' and not GNU/Hurd because the GNU is also implied in that case.
I deeply respect RMS and furthermore agree with much of what he says. This is one issue I DISSAGREE with him on. I wish he would listen to what others have to say, especially others who like me agree with 99% of his other stances. It would make him a better representative for the FSF, better liked and would not diminish his philosophical goals one iota. People who never listen to anyone else's oppinions may one day find their oppinions lacking.
Liberty.
The Mach Kernel announced in the article is just the "microkernel" core of the Hurd, it requires a herd of servers (drivers?) to do anything useful, and this collection is at 0.3 (maybe), NOT 1.3 working on 2.0?
The complete Hurd (or, at least, enough of it to provide the drivers and services you plan to use) would be required to comprise a "drop-in" replacement for Linux, so it isn't simply a matter of replacing the Linux Kernel with this Mach Kernel, calling it "GNU/Hurd 1.0", and starting work on 2.0?
For that matter, why not use the (I would hope perfectly good) BSD Mach kernel and focus on the drivers to make it useful? This was good enough for Apple...
I suppose there's that BSD license, but if BSD licensing lets the monopolist assimilate code, wouldn't it do the same for a GPL project?
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
Here's a commentary recently run by Linux Journal on a comparison between monolithic kernels (e.g. Linux) and microkernels (e.g. Mach, Hurd).
Obviously it's biased towards monolithic, but it's an interesting read nontheless.
IF YOU AREN'T INTERESTED IN THE HURD, THEN SHUT UP.
/. editors decided to carry the story. The comments are filled with jokes about how stupid RMS and the HURD are. I dearly wish there was a "strip all comments labeled "Funny" button.
Can slashdot posters quit talking out of their rear-ends for even one article?
A long-running project in the open source world just made an announcement. The
I'm very interested in how the HURD is progressing, and in TECHNICAL OPINIONS on the HURD. Where are the technical opinions among the comments? Damn few and far between. This is the sort of nonsense that makes slashdot look worse than USA Today (hell, slashdot doesn't even have color barcharts on the front page!).
At one time, I learned a lot about computers and socioeconomic factors surrounding computing by reading slashdot comments. Several years ago, comments included information from computer scientists, sysadmins, and knowledgable hobbyists. Eventually there was a problem where you couldn't find those comments in between the 50 copies of "First Post!". Moderation came, and I could usually find the good posts again.
The comments on this article, however, demonstrate just how stupid the slashdot population has become. My theory is that the huge popularity of slashdot in the US has attracted a readership which closely mirrors the average intelligence of the general US population -- you know, the same population that elected GW Bush for president (motto: "What we need is a clear policy in the Middle East"). The moderation system that once worked well is failing miserably because almost all moderators are as stupid as the posters.
As anyone can tell, I'm pretty pissed that a bunch of whiney losers in diapers, who couldn't spell "algorithm" if they had a copy of CLR on their desk, or explain why CISC was a natural choice for microprocessors in the 1960s, have drowned out any hope of interesting discussion on a technical topic. The comments attached to this article provide some sort of slashdot corrolary to the bikeshed axiom: Since a moron reading slashdot feels compelled to make authoritative posts on every article (to increase their karma?), they will post about the bikeshed color if they have nothing to say about the bikeshed. God help us when the discussion turns to nuclear power plants.
Beyond technical comments, why does everyone feel a need to deride RMS and the GNU project all the time? It seems natural to have some social discussion of RMS and the GNU project attached to any article about the HURD. I can understand why RMS is unpopular. I can understand why some people dislike RMS' campaign to use the name "GNU/Linux" when discussing operating systems which use the GNU foundation but replace the GNU kernel (I guess my feeling on this is clear). What I can't understand is why people put so damn much energy into making RMS a laughing stock.
At this point, it no longer matters what RMS does or says; the slashdot readership seems hell-bent on destroying RMS just because they heard that he was unpopular in some circles. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd suggest that Microsoft had a pool of RMS-trolls trying to change public opinion of RMS, GNU, and Free Software via slashdot comments.
I'd like to encourage everyone reading this to do the following:
1) Think for yourself
2) Listen careefully to what people say, in comments and otherwise
3) If you don't have anything useful to contribute, then keep your mouth closed.
4) Be careful with the "funny" moderation tag -- we all need humor, but there's more (or should be) to slashdot than (rightly or wrongly) smacking people down
If we follow those rules, then maybe we'll be able to learn stuff from slashdot comments again. For instance, comments on this article about a new HURD release might include:
1) discussions of microkernel history, strengths, and weaknesses,
2) which microkernels are still in use
3) how the Darwin kernel design differs from the HURD design
4) a reasonable, well-thought-out debate about whether the long term benefits of the HURD justify the current HURD effort in the Free Software community
5) how changes in hardware might affect the expected future value of the HURD, given the HURD's extremely slow development
6) alternatives to monolithic and microkernel designs in principle and practice (I'm not aware of any, but surely someone has something in-between, if not totally different)
7) whether the Free Software and Open Source communities should really be involved with basic software research, or lower its ambitions and simply copy existing, working software
Maybe this post can at least spawn an intelligent discussion of whether it violates the rules it proposes (it probably does, but I'm not going to fix it because I'm still seeing red).
-Paul Komarek
The latest "Hazelnut" L4 kernel (written in C++) finally passed the fastest L4 x86 assembly kernel for interprocess communication performance. This is very important for microkernel performance, since many things traditionally handled by system calls (setting some registers then trapping an interupt in the kernel) are instead handled via IPC with user-space drivers. I'd like to point out that without some crazy high-level macros in your compiler, it still seems like you need a minimum of about 32k of your ring 0 code is written in assembly (on x86) to properly manipulate the hardware. (You could come up with some funky architecture where not all of your ring 0 code is in what you call the kernel. Doesn't NT/2K/XP have some non-bootstrapping ring 0 code outside of kernel32.dll?) (This is from what I remember of L4 and QNX documentation.)
Have no fear, the X.2 API is bein sorted out. People are holding off on porting the HURD to L4 until the L4 X.2 API is finalized. My guess is that porting will begin this Summer.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
You bastard. I clicked that. Worse than a goatse.cx link.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
Intelligent? This is /. my friend. Check your brains in at the door.
Now /this/ is a troll. But it will probably get modded up at insightful. Or funny.
*Sigh*
I really was interested to know where the respective Machs stand and what OSS/joint dev is going on.
Lies about crimes
I demand that the Hurd is being called Mach/Hurd, because the Hurd is just a bunch of servers running on top of the foundation of Mach. The Hurd crew added a critical piece, but by no means created the whole thing, which using just "Hurd" as name implies. Adding Mach to the name gives due credit to the Mach creators.
The GPL is certainly one of the greatest _legal_ texts ever written in computer history. But, with regards to _coding_, Linux stands head and shoulders above GNU. I use Linux, despite of GNU, not because of it. I wish I had a better compiler than GCC, I'm glad I have better editors than Vim or Emacs. Yes, GNU is essential to Linux, just like cement is essential to building a house. Does anybody remember which brand of cement was used in Frank Lloyd Wright's houses?
Not only has he been successfully trolled by its parent post but he has been doubly "trolled" in that the moderators thought that _he_ was a Troll. I don't know whether to laugh or cry givne how pathethic it is.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
When I first read about GNU/Hurd, it struck me as very interesting. The only downside to Linux that has ever seriously annoyed me is it's monolithic kernel, which makes creating bootdisks a pain. In bad old DOS at least I could fit the bootloader, kernel, and all the utils I needed on one stiffy, without having to bother with compression. Microkernels seemed the way to go to me, and here was this Open microkernel from everybody's favorite organization, that offered modularity and who knows what other nifty features. Unfortunately, the system seemed less than usable, and the project looked pretty dead. So I'm sure happy to hear that it is in fact alive! Now if we could get Linux's device drivers to work on it, that'd be just great. This goes for almost any other kernel as well (I'm thinking especially about AtheOS). :-( ), but microkernels rock. Just look at QNX, if offers great perfromance and scalability like no other. I heard some rumors about the source being opened this summer, but a visit to there website didn't enlighten me much. Does anybody know what parts are going to be open-sourced and what the possibilities are for integrating this with pre-existing Linux and/or *BSD work? I really think that an open-source QNX would be my OS of choice...time will teach, I guess.
Still, I think that the Hurd has a long way to go before it actually becomes useful (and if enough people think like this it will probably never get any further
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Congrats, your post was to the point and especially very heartfelt.
Not much I can say except that you will probably receive as answer more crapy noise about RMS,the FSF 'agenda', I'll call it just Linux' and 'free as in beer is free enough'. All this appears to be trendy amongst the newly converted, and thus almost always completely ignorant of any issue that truely matters. I don't know why things have come to this, but years ago when someone said they were GNU/Linux users I knew that we had at least some shared values... nowadays I always expect ppl complaining about MS Office not being available and generally pissing on the ppl that made the system available in the first place.
How fucking sad.
Way to go, fsmunoz
Snip the first one - I agree with it. Instead of doing this extremely well-designed, non-unixy multiserver microkernel design, Linus was in a hurry and just redid it the unix way. Good job. (I love Hurd!)
"The second hard bit that Linus did which the Free Software Foundation has clearly failed to do is to evolve a development methodology which allows - encourages - very many people to take part, and which manages to integrate and exploit the fruits of all their labours. That's Linus' second achievement: a social achievement, and a big one."
No; RMS did this back with TECO Emacs in the seventies. Larry Wall did it with perl in the eighties. The GNU project was a success partly because the unix toolbox philosophy - every developer could make their own version of the tools.
"But Linus third achievement is the key one, and it is key to your project of making Free Software available to ordinary people all over the world. He has brought the system to critical mass, where it's robust enough and stable enough for many people to use it, and in consequence many people are motivated to port many programs to it. This is Linus' third achievement. It's a cultural achievement, and it is an absolutely critical one without which any Free Software movement is ultimately vacuous and solipsistic."
You need a kernel to boot the system - you need a compiler to make the kernel. RMS wrote the best compiler in the world. Gcc.
A couple of years ago, when RMS started insisting on the (admittedly awkward) name GNU/Linux, there were many people talking about "the Linux system" but not talking about software freedom. RMS figured that adding GNU to the name would remind people of that. (And it'd give him a share of the credit. Everyone likes credit.)
These days, this problem is smaller (but it still exists. The kernel/bitkeeper situation is tragic), and many people already think of freedom when they hear about "linux".
I think many of the comments about Linus and Richard are essentially correct with regards to the important stuff. Free Software as a Platform (Richard M. Stallman) and how to deploy that said software which is what I think Linux is ala (Linux Torvalds).
What is left is arguing what is important. The software and applications or the OS kernel?
Pointless, really.
Which would you rather throw away? The OS Kernel that runs your applications or the applications that make your OS kernel useful?
Does it matter which guy created the OS kernel or application software: gcc, sendmail, libc's, ld...etc. ????
However...I must agree with Linus.
On a technical point, I can't see the benefits of Mach software technology. Besides, I see many of those supposed benefits in how the existing, now semi-monolithic 2.4 kernel, and even less monolithic up N comming 2.6 kernel, are packaged.
But we have many of those benefits already in my opinion in both the packaging and distribution of Linux. Some of the better ones are NOT GNU based. (VMware for example), but...
WHO CARES? That (MACH) certainly is not a technically valid engineering reason to ditch the Linux kernel for HURD, or to even join the Hurd cause.
I am not sure it makes sense to base an engineering strategy on whether or not software requires reengineering simply because it is not GNU, and if it isn't it must be defective in some way as to require it.
Obviously not all commercial software is crap.
(Although I must admit a large portion of it is...)
There are features of the OS kernel that many think shouldn't be part of the base requirements or engineering of a OS kernel anyway. (i.e. the whole idea of virtual machines/processor contexts...etc).
Here is where I have problems with Stallman and find many of the arguments for his replacement of the Linux kernel with HURD postively, absolutely bogus. Many of his statements I have read usually go along the lines that everything must be entirely GNU License compliant in the kernel distro.
They certainly must be if we are ever to have a fully GNU implementation of OS Kernel and Applications. However will that buy us anything more than what we already have?
Free software does not gurantee well engineered software. Lots of free stuff is crap, both in specification, implementation and final engineering/deployment. Don't believe me? Wander over to FreshMeat and look at some of the poor cuts in that meat market!
Engineering decisions in software and politics are best kept apart. Seldom does politics yield good software.
Which is what I think the Hurd project IS, politics, not smart engineering.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
because it's a FSF person sending out an email digitally signed by a non-free program. PGPFreeware is free as in beer, not free as in speech. GnuPG is free as in speech. Like the anonymous poster said, it's just like Microsoft's use of open source software to run hotmail while advocating against open source at the same time.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Arrgh! And here's me without any mod points ;p
ehm... modularity is always good -- basically a micro kernel tries to put everything in user mode, this will make it easier to upgrade only parts of the system (do you really like to recompile your kernel to try a new file system?), it will add more features for the non-root user, because he can run his own services without security concerns (AFAIK a user can't mount a file system (which would actually be handy, e.g. to mount ftp as a file system on my unix account)), it will improve the uptime, because only the parts in the micro kernel really needs to be 100% stable, as anything besides this can just be killed (and re-started).
The only real argument I have heard against the monolithic approach is speed, but a) this is not a proved fact, for example Jochen Liedtke's L4 micro kernel (for x86) is an efficient implementation that beats the monolithic approachs, and b) memory protection, page swapping, using XML for data and many other things we do today are also more expansive than the more raw approach -- but do we really want to go back to this?
Seems from posts above (Namely a guy who joined the GNU project in ~88.) that this is completely bollox. When he joined he suggested that he should work on a kernel (This was before Linux.) but RMS told him that. "No, someone will make their kernel open eventually. It's better to do userland stuff." So he did a Fortran77 compiler instead.
And I trust that guy a lot more.
What did get RMS "annoyed" was that everyone was saying how great Linux was. When in actuality the majority of the system was GNU. (Compiler, libraries, utilities etc.)
Not sure what your point is here. EGCS was primarily a distinct (from GCC) approach to project management, not really a distinct product.
So, if you mean EGCS was/is another C compiler that can compile the Linux kernel, well, yes, that's true, but EGCS always was the GNU C compiler, project-managed outside of the strict GNU sphere for a time, but not really "another C compiler" in a sense that's sufficiently pertinent to my earlier post.
Put another way: for most intents and purposes, EGCS was never anything but the GNU C compiler with contributions from GNU people to make it distinct from GCC based on different assumptions about what was important at the time -- different from the assumptions made by the FSF-appointed GCC project leader, who is, if I understand the situation correctly (having been out of the "biz" of working on GCC for awhile), making substantial contributions to GCC (which is, today, more derived from the EGCS branch than the old GCC 2.8 branch, I think).
Certainly EGCS is nowhere near to being an example of a successful attempt at creating a Linux-kernel-compatible, non-GNU C compiler, since it "fails" at being the latter -- it was the GNU C code base from the beginning, and became GNU C itself not long after.
Anyone believing GNU Hurd should be re-prioritized could, of course, do what the EGCS people did: start their own project using the same code base, and project-lead it their way, perhaps ultimating in their variant being anointed by the FSF as the "official" one, as happened when EGCS became official GCC. (And, yes, take the risk that, for whatever reason, the FSF might never be willing to take that step, and be prepared to engage in the sort of diplomacy that minimizes that risk. Though my memory is a bit hazy, I think it's safe to say the world is a better place because I wasn't in charge of that sort of "diplomacy" when it came to the EGCS->GCC transition negotiations -- else we'd probably still have a resource-wasting split on our hands. ;-)
Similarly, someone wishing to augment or ultimately replace GCC as "the" compiler for Linux is welcome to try, and they can start with GCC as the code base if they like (if they aren't doing it to create a non-GPL'ed alternative, for example).
A key thing to remember: convincing enough people to use your alternative rather than the "mainstream" product (GCC, Linux, whatever) requires more than just one-upping the mainstream.
That'll get a few people to switch, but to get enough to switch to build the kind of development and maintenance momentum behind your variant necessary to make it an independent entity in the way that Linux, GCC, Apache are pretty much independent of one or even a few developers, you'll have to N-up the mainstream, where N is some combination of a few really important improvements and many less-important ones.
I believe that happened for EGCS because that project did not represent so much a splintering of resources away from GCC at the time as a stampede. While maintaining g77 for both forks for a time, GCC struck me as more of the "splinter" in terms of size and vitality, EGCS as more of the "mainstream", so EGCS had a lot of momentum from the get-go and, almost overnight, achieved a pretty hefty value for N.
Yet, IIRC, there was still a substantial audience insisting on using GCC rather than EGCS even as the FSF was anointing EGCS as the official GCC going forward. (Can't quantify that audience, sorry, but it would be interesting to see a case study of that whole episode of a free-software-development fork and subsequent join; seems like much could be learned from having some hard data on how it went down, both internally and in terms of outside perceptions and usage of the software.)
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
QNX is probably the best-known working microkernel system out there. (Mach is better-known, but nobody actually used the microkernel versions, they used the 2.5ish versions like Next mostly.) Runs on a reasonably large number of Intel platforms, though unfortunately the single-floppy network demo only had drivers for a model of Ethernet card I didn't have, and hasn't been updated since 1999. They've probably had enough bloatware that the kernel no longer fits in 4KB (but newer Intel chips have bigger L1 caches these days :-), not that you're really need it to stay in L1.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks