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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
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)
> When Debian ports it, i'll try it out.
It's work in progress, and already usable. See http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/ for installation instructions.
By the way, Mach isn't "the hurd kernel", as Michael implies. The Hurd is userspace servers - therefore then name "Hird of Unix-replacing _Daemons_".
...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)
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!
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.
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?
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 !
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.
Yes, they use Mach. But they didn't take their code base from GNU. They got their codebase from NeXT who got it from Carnegie Mellon University. And, yes, I'm a NeXT zealot who is deeply offended by all the people who think that OS X comes from Apple. :-)
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.
The united gnu's!
That actually sounds good!
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
Yeah, any day now they'll declare that TrueType is going open source, the OSX desktop is going to allow themes and they're releasing an x86 version of OSX regardless of how their hardware department feels.
Apple is as proprietary, controlling and greedy as MS on the best of days. Remember, these people will sue you for talking about new features before Steve can tell you how wonderful they are.
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.
OK, so if you need lots of device drivers, there's this open-source kernel called Linux. If you like the microkernel approach, there's Mach-Darwin. Both of these are stable, reliable, and well-supported. Isn't it time to admit that HURD got to market 10 years too late?
Find free books.
UnitedLinux/Hurd then
What do you get when you combine Tux & Hurd? Makes for an interesting mascot, anyway.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
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.
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
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.
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.
I suddenly pictured an image of Mr. Hankey from that comment.
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
Mr. Hanky, the RMS-Poo,
He loves me, and I love GNU.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Almost the entire Gnu Mach kernel is licensed under a BSD-like license from Carnegie Mellon University. They've just slapped a GPL on top of it all. Go look through the source. You can also find examples of the same thing throughout the Gnu C library. So it would seem that the HURD, and the FSF, are indeed interested in BSD-like licensed code.
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
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.
This is just GNU's Mach kernel that is at 1.3, not the Hurd itself. Hurd still remains at 0.2 or 0.3, I can't remember which and I can't be bothered to look it up. STill, this is good progress. They've fixed some pretty annoying problems since the last time I played with Hurd.
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
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.
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*
Yes it is. It's the Debian system ported to run on a new architecture (the Mach Kernel and HURD servers)
Ceci n'est pas un post
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
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.
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
You should take your own .sig advice.
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".
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