Slashdot Mirror
GNU/Hurd Gets POSIX Threads
An anonymous reader writes "Neal Walfield announced the first release of RMGPT, which is (or rather, aspires to one day be) a complete, portable implementation of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 threads also known as POSIX threads. With this new pthreads library, it will soon be possible to run complex software packages on the Hurd, including the GNOME and KDE desktops, the OpenOffice suite, and the Mozilla web browser. Find more information here, including the humorous meaning behind RMGPT, and insight into a future Hurd release..."
... that this arrives a week after Linux gets it?
Carpe Daemon
... that POSIX put in defining this standard, and how much extra functionality this library introduces, should we not refer to the OS as POSIX/GNU/Hurd.
We don't want to downplay their involvement now, do we?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Looks like the Hurd server collection is starting to lift off. Since Debian is working on Debian GNU/Hurd, and now this new ability, all the Hurd developers need is some more driver developers.
:)
If they get that Hurd will start to become a world usable kernel, and it's always good to have some competition in kernel land
I read a long time back that The HURD would be "ready" very soon. However, The HURD just keeps chugging along at a slow pace... how many people really care about it? I know there's a Debian GNU/HURD, but does anyone use it? Hopefully this is a big step to more widespread adoption of the thing.
Happy New Year, it's 1984!
Warning: Too many connections in /prod/www/virtual/kerneltrap.com/www/htdocs/includ es/database.mysql.inc on line 7
Too many connections
:)
Oh my, looks like the server needs more POSIX/GNU/HURD threads itself
What is the relationship between GNU/Hurd, Darwin and MKLinux? All is based around a Mach-kernel. Are there any familiarity between them that have any relevance? Does the continuing work on Darwin and GNU/Hurd benefit from one another, and if so, in what respect?
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
POSIX threads is an extension to POSIX.1 (IEE1003.1), known as either POSIX.1c or IEE1003.1c.
The POSIX threads API is actually fairly small and simple, and works well across different implementations (E.g. kernel threads v's user space threads etc.).
Not knowing much about HURD I don't know if the kernel already had threads support, so I don't know how much work went into this implementation. Does anyone here know if this is a complete user threads implementation, or is it a wrapper over some form of "native" threading scheme?
Iraq develops the M16. Korea develops a Nuclear Power Plant. Various 3rd world countries have developed a concept known only by the cryptic name of "irragation".
Gimme a break. Tell me when HURD is able to access a harddrive or a partition greater than 500 megs in size (last I heard this was a real issue). Tell me when HURD can utilize both processors in my Dual P3 box. Tell me when HURD doesnt suck ass.
J
I love idealists not because I am one, but because they make life bearable for pragmatists such as myself.
Regarding the name, RMGPT, Neal explains, "Most new program names are a bunch
of letters stuck together. Only later does it become an acronym and the words
become bound. This is boring; each new release of RMGPT will offer a fresh, new and
exciting expansion of the 'acronym'." For this first release, RMGPT stands for
"Rubbish, I asked for mine with Minced Garlic, Please Take this back".
That should be Linux/AOL/GNU/Hurd.
Lengthy letter to follow.
Yours truly,
Linus
While it's cool to have toy operating systems like Gnu/HURD available, I'm wondering if it's such a good idea to be spending developer time on this project in the current highly competitive, doggy-dog OS marketplace. Wouldn't it be more useful for the entire open source community to rally around Linux?
If the HURD developers had been putting their skills to use improving the Linux kernel for the last decade, maybe Windows would be history by now. Come to think of it, the same goes for *BSD developers. Once commercial software has been eliminated, then we can start goofing off and experimenting with alternatives. Until then, we all owe it to open source to support the OS with the best chance to beat Micro$tuff. At this point, that OS looks like Linux.
So why are the folks at GNU wasting their times working on this kind of thing? I think that maybe Richard Stallson is still hurting over the fact that no one says "GNU/Linux," and so is trying to hurt Linux, even if it means helping Windows! Any thoughts?
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I think you'll find that it's 'dog eat dog'...
But, I don't see the point. In the beginning Hurd made sense but, it floundered for so long that it has been eclipsed by Linux and the BSDs.
Without being insulting, I'd just like to ask, what's the point of putting further effort into the Hurd, rather than concentrating on advancing Linux and or the BSDs?
Now, Hurd is almost a real kernel.. Finally those GNU people have gotten off their asses and done what that punk Linus kid did years ago.
ok but it had to be said....who the hell uses the hurd?
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
Stallman & co have been working on the HURD since before linux was born. They never went for a monolithic kernel because they preferred the HURD approach. So at most you can accuse them of not giving up on their original intentions...
http://www.geocrawler.com/lists/3/GNU/332/0/972458 8/
http://www.geocrawler.com/lists/3/GNU/332/0/972458 8/
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
I can't wait for your google spellchecker to be built into OpenOffice.org - it'll make my life easier :-)
Try NetBSD... safe,straightforward,useful.
As programmers add more and more functionality to Linux, it will eventually become a mainstream desktop OS for the non-technical user. Geeks need an obscure, hard to install and run OS so they can keep their 1337 status. That is the reason for HURD.
Here is another one
Is it just me or does the GNU/HURD icon bear a startling resemblance to South Park's Mr. Hanky?
yea i stole your sig- whats the big deal, it sucked anyway.
The idea of a microkernel is to have multiple seperate servers running on top of it, providing some clear seperation between different parts of the system. Hurd is the only one of the three that does this, MkLinux and Darwin are both implemented as a single monolithic server on top of the Mach microkernel.
Also, they are based on different versions of Mach. I believe Darwin is based on 2.5, MkLinux on 3.0 and Hurd on 4.0 but don't quote me on that.
Yeah, they'd just blue screen and be done with it.
Will they be called GNU/threads? :^)
...this library will probably be called GNU/posix.
Really Massive General Purpose Threads?
Too many connections
Socialism at its finest. .NET servers wouldn't have this problem.
Good point. A .NET server would say, "Not enough licenses."
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
I am curious if Hurd will block out 'naughty non-free' software. Will people be able to switch gradually or be shown a completely new system and utilities that looks nothing like what they are familiar with?
does the GNU/HURD icon bear a startling resemblance to South Park's Mr. Hanky?
It might, but that's not even close to what was intended. It's a baby GNU. Slashdot uses the "GNU" topic mostly for HURD stories and for GPL violation stories.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It uses GnuMach which has evolved quite a lot from the other two. GnuMach 2.x has some serious bit-rot, but the new GnuMach 3.x (formerly OSKit-Mach) is kind of exciting in that it uses the OSKit for all its drivers and much more.
Clickety Click
Remember, the Hurd's not done yet.
By the time it is done, there won't be any 'naughty non-free' software that anyone actually needs.
This is already true for utilities and commodity services; you don't need proprietary *anything* to run a web server, or provide infrastructure.
GNOME, KDE, and their many stepchildren are well on their way to filling in the remaining blanks.
Soon, it'll just be a few large highly specialised apps (like 1200-user collection management systems, for example) that remain proprietary. And that stuff gets run on dedicated machines anyway.
Since Hurd's not even close to being done yet, there is plenty of time for freeware to finish catching up.
This is a userspace library implementing Posix threads. Linux, I might point out, doesn't natively implement pthreads in the kernel. You might also consider that Hurd's design isn't monolithic, so of course there's not going to be much in the kernel. Please go read up on things before you flame them. This may be /., but it doesn't give you full rein to be clueless ~_^
... ;_; )
(By the way, sorry to burst your bubble, but MORE PEOPLE THAN LINUS WORK ON LINUX. Most of the really fun threading stuff has been in Ingo's domain, of late. I really need an old, cheap computer to run 2.5 on and hack around
Um, Linux has had a somewhat-native pthreads library for more than a week. (Just a little more :3 ) The announcement you saw last week about Linux was the fact that thread creation and destruction in 2.5 is now so fast that you can do it 100,000 times in about two seconds on certain developer's machines. So you'll have to enlighten me on the nature of this coincidence, I don't see it. ^_^;
You see, the only way for non-Windows to beat Windows is for every single person to create their own operating system with slightly different interpretations of the standards. Once this low-level heterogeneity exists, software companies will need to create slightly different versions of each of their products to sell to us (or we could each create our own IRC client, calendar app, webmail frontend, etc). This virtually guarantees our freedom as well as making us immune to virii and girlfriends.
Can you imagine a GNU/HURD of POSIX threads?!!
Unless, of course, there aren't ANY developers, in which case it is directly proportional. ;)
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
GNU is great, but they perpetuated the decimal cancer with gcc. Do you know just how stupid it is to have decimal floats with binary float hardware? Oh, and thanks for ignoring me. Looks like they're promoting another backwards standard.
From what I have read, the HURD tries to go to a direction that no other O/S has gone before. This is good because innovation is needed, but they should get rid of all the notions of the past: processes, filesystems, users, groups etc. all these things are for O/Ses of the past. A computer is primarily a deposit for information. We put information in it, we exctract information from it, we process information (and we play games!). They should do the following design: each computer shall have a global tree of information nodes, where as each information node can act as a repository for other information nodes. The system shall be object-oriented, where each node has a specific interface that must implement. Each information node will be an object with all OO shit on it: property querying, run-time type id, message passing, etc. If you sit down and think of it, everything is an object and a repository: there are files, some files are databases, some databases contain records, some records contain entries...an executable contains code, data, resources...a font contains metrics...a window contains other windows...a network contains other computers...etc. By ditching the notion of 'program/task/process', we can get rid of re-usability once and for all. Let me describe an example. Let's suppose that I want to make a bitmap processing application. Here is the traditional way: 1) design the gui 2) find/implement some lib which manages most formats 3) implement a nice C++ framework for working with those formats 4) implement drawing and other operations Here is the new way: 1) use the global 'Bitmap' class as an interface for manipulating bitmap objects; jpeg, tiff, and other formats know the internals of themselves; all I need to know as a programmer is the bitmap API: draw line, put pixel, get width, get height, resize, etc. Suppose that I wanted to search for a photo which is like another photo, possibly with some pattern matching. With traditional operating system: 1) must use special program 'cause I can't do this operation on the system level 2) must use database 3) must use digital imaging app 4) most propably I will not have all this so I will do it by hand The new way: 1) having a handle to the 'bitmap' in hand that I want to compare with, I scan the object tree and call operator '==' for each bitmap. Or use an API like 'patternMatch' which is common to all 'bitmap' types. Another example: lets say I want to browse my MP3 collection for songs of a specific artist The traditional O/S: 1) can't do it (well, except on BeOS) The new O/S: 1) search and return a list for all objects that are subclasses of 'mp3' and where 'artist == Madonna'. Only one browser whould be needed. Custom browsers could be embedded within a master interface. An app could be one object with all its data (code, resources, dlls, etc) in one object repository. The HURD follows some of the above logic, but not completely. They are trying to implement traditional things (filesystems, proccesses, etc) but with a microkernel architecture. But this is not a big deal, because monolithic kernel customization has become very easy, even for non-programmers. They should be doing something for the future.
I've always found myself intrigued by that fact that Windows NT has a POSIX subsystem. However, security folks always tell you to disable it so I've gotten the distinct impression it isn't really used for anything (I've never personally seen a program that uses it.). Now this post comes along and it becomes obvious to me that POSIX is a big deal in the UNIX-like-OS world. Did MS just screw up their implementation or is it something potentially useful that nobody happens to use? TW
That group's almost as scary at these guys. But nowhere near as scaray as The bin Partridge family!
Please be patient. They have only been at it for 18 years. My God! You want everything done at once!
An anonymous GNU/reader GNU/writes "Neal Walfield GNU/announced the first GNU/release of GNU/RMGPT, which is (or rather, GNU/aspires to one day be) a GNU/complete, GNU/portable GNU/implementation of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 GNU/threads also known as GNU/POSIX threads. With this new GNU/pthreads GNU/library, it will soon be possible to run GNU/complex GNU/software GNU/packages on the GNU/Hurd, including the GNU/GNOME and GNU/KDE GNU/desktops, the GNU/OpenOffice suite, and the GNU/Mozilla GNU/web GNU/browser. Find more GNU/information here, including the GNU/humorous GNU/meaning behind GNU/RMGPT, and GNU/insight into a GNU/future GNU/GNU/Hurd GNU/release..."
It's because there are too many shitty programmers with too much time on their hands.
--
"What do you want me to do? Whack a guy? Off a guy? Whack off a guy? Cause I'm married."
When the Turd was started in 1984, there were no 1.9GB hard drives for PCs. So using one would have been a problem.
At this point in time I think we all must sit back and ask whether GNU/HURD is *really* useful or just an overextended ego trip. Remember this story.
-Sean
For an actual intelligent reply to my post. I admit I am not up to date on the latest research into micro kernels, and my position that micro kernels are slower than monolithic kernels is partly based on out of date information, and partly based on conjecture.
When I get a spare couple of hours I'll take a look at the papers you link to.
Since Hurd is a GNU package then it should not be GNU/Hurd. Instead we should use GNU Hurd. Since Linux is not a GNU package then it is referred to as GNU/Linux. For more details see the FAQ.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
Gee, on my quad-processor Pentium Pro, it sure as heck doesn't give ANY indication of being multithreaded!! It's so unresponsive when it's doing *anything*, that I figured the thing used a central event loop, for all the active windows!
This one is amusing :)
How about someone brave enough take GNU/Hurd and put a non-X graphical interface on it and make a cool desktop OS? For good measure, you can throw stuff in from BeOS and (your fav. desktop OS)?
Just an idea.
Moderators: Too lazy to login, so byte me.
GNU/cares ?
Hi!
The comment above is also a fake.
Cheers,
GNU/Wolfgang
Hi!
The above comments is a fake, it was not written by me.
Cheers,
GNU/Wolfgang
Hi!
Above comment was not written by me.
Cheers,
GNU/Wolfgang
I've reconsidered.
I believe faking me is pretty damned funny.
Cheers,
GNU/Wolfgang
Hi!
;-) This is bullshit and I would never write that GNU/Linux will become obsolete. It has its place.
Hell, why was this moderated up?
Cheers,
GNU/Wolfgang
Much as I hate to say it, the two are lightyears apart.
Hurd isn't really usable, unless you're doing it for the pure diehard ideology of it. It isn't technically notable (at least at the current time) and doesn't even begin to compare to Linux from a performance point of view.
When you see an announcement about Linux, it's usually something along the lines of "new major feature annouced that makes Linux better at foo than operating system baz". With Hurd, it's usually "Basic UNIX functionality foo now works, sometimes, assuming you don't push it too hard".
There are a lot of (better) kernels out there. BSD. Linux.
Frankly, the only people that get excited about Hurd are the uber hard core FSF folks.
With luck, in six years the Hurd might be up to where Linux is today.
Finally, one last point: the main reason Hurd exists is so that Stallman can slap the FSF's "GNU/" on top of an OS. It isn't to address some specific technical failure of Linux.
May we never see th
Hi!
It was not written by me and is bullshit.
Cheers,
GNU/Wolfgang
Why not call:
The kernel "Linux", since that's what the kernel makers call it.
The distro whatever the distro maker calls it: "Red Hat Linux 8.0".
The POSIX utilities whatever their authors want to call them: "GNU grep".
Emacs whatever the emacs author wants to call it: "GNU emacs".
If everyone just named things what their *creator* wanted them called, life would be a lot simpler. It would also get rid of the stupid GNU/Linux debate.
May we never see th
Hi!
I suggest you learn to spell my name when you try to fake me.
Cheers,
GNU/Wolfgang
I'm going to run right out and try HURD today!
THANK YOU!
WWEND?
Can anobody explain what are the benefits and drawbacks of an exokernel based system compared to a microkernel one? From what I understand, both are similar in that they have a minimal kernel. The difference is that microkernels use daemons to provide services to client programs while exokernels have the same functionality in user space libraries. At least exokernel advocates seem to be saying that exokernels are quicker than microkernels (and potentially quicker than traditional monolithic kernels too) because there is no need to context switch when you need system services. And microkernels need some kind of IPC to communicate with the daemons, which adds even more overhead, right?
Then he should have written the GPL to force everything that uses his code to put GNU/ in front of it.
Do people really find this funny? Now I understand how dreck like Will and Grace and Red Dwarf get made
Bottom line is that both of them and their "followers" (if this term can even be used in this context) have done a lot for free software. The RMS camp will continue to exert an important influence within the community and their work will be highly valued, but as you say "business seems to have and apathy for ideals."
Pragmatism is very important for bringing useful things into the market quickly, and naturally that is where many people are coming from. On the other hand, in the long run, ideas (and ideals) do matter.
It is important that the GPL is widely adopted, and there isn't a lot of confusion from variations on license terms, but that doesn't mean you should get religious about it. In the long run, these things will settle out, and they already are.
The microkernel ideas behind Mach and all of its derivatives are an important advance in Computer Science, and the HURD project is where these ideas are being devoloped in full. They are not ready for full scale deployment, but when they are, they will be adopted quickly. That is the beauty of a single clear Free license (GPL), because there is no reason that these two projects can't exchange large pieces of code. If the Linux team wants to pull in the HURD microkernel in a major release cycle, there is no licensing issue. The only issue is whether it make technical sense. Nobody should worry that the HURD doesn't have many drivers, since it should be possible to import drivers from Linux. In fact it should be possible to import them wholesale if the interfaces can be matched.
I would think that the acronym really stands for
"RMGPT Means Gnu Posix Threads"
Hey Strom, sup?
Could you please ask some of your colleagues in the House to vote for HR 5469?
As a previous college radio person and ongoing enthusiast, I would appreciate your help in this matter.
Cheers,
metachris
Mach has already quite good support for lots of devices, since they're using the Linux or OSKit drivers for GNU Mach and Mach-OSKit respectively. Of course, I wouldn't expect USB to work, but most of the common pc equipment works properly...
Hi! Well, GNU Mach 1.x uses the drivers from Linux 2.0, OSKit has the driver support from Linux 2.2. We support the most common stuff, but some things are completely missing, like sound card drivers. So the hardware support is nothing to be proud of, and is also not of high priority, as it is strategically better to care about the core components first. As long as it is possible to run the systen on most computers, of course. :)
Cheers,
GNU/Wolfgang
When? In another ten years when they figure out a filesystem?
Chris
So Buddha walks into a pizza parlor and says: "Hey, make me one with everything."
The parent is a fake !
Cheers,
GNU/Wolfgang
for instance CSP has a reasonable theoretical foundation and is infinitely nicer to program with than those locks and semaphors invented in the '70s...
here's a brief history and more accessible explanation. plan 9 has a nice C implementation.
so much nicer to program with!
Does anyone still use straight POSIX for threading? The old C interface is woefully inadequate for modern C++ code and ideas. I use something like ZThreads or ACE.
Did he just say "freeware" ?
Another bombshell hit the beleagured GNU/TURD community today when it was discovered that GNU/TURD isn't a real OS. It was also reported that dirty GNU hippe, Richard M. Stallman, only showers after some of his nasty chicken love. The GNU/TURD community would have been shaken, but there wasn't anyone in the community.
no further message.
...that's great, but does it have libtrash yet?
For example, on Linux, there are very few drivers that are shipped separately from the kernel. Lots of hardware can only be used if you pull over the kernel source tree, patch it, recompile it, and install it. That makes it unusable for many potential users and applications. Even for people who know how to do that, it's a big pain. Similarly, there are many things people would like to do with networking, file systems, and other kernel functions that are just hard to do in Linux.
I don't know whether the Hurd addresses any of these issues. But there is definitely a need for more kinds of free kernels. We shouldn't be locked into a single approach to free kernels.
No further message.
Hi.
I have an account now. Parent comment is a fake, please recognize as such.
Cheers,
Gnu/Wolfgang.
Sick him Rimmer.
No message.
Was to take ANYTHING posted in the comments section seriously. It's not serious...you're being trolled by high-school children and bored HTML programmers who really don't give a shit one way or another about GNU/Hurd.
You've been feeding them just as fast and as furious as they've been popping up, however; so if you STFU, and refrained from AC posting; maybe they'd get off your ass.
Failing that, screw it. This is slashdot; EVERYONE knows that the comment section is a toilet. EVERYONE. Go back to the mailing list where you are free from the imposters and the goatse freaks.
The "GNU people" you're refering to have been working really hard for a long time.
Some say that Linux could have been developed without the tremendous effort put into gcc and other GNU projects. That is true.
but that wasn't, and isn't, the goal of the Hurd or of GNU. The Hurd is not trying to be a kernel that works on _some_ system. It is trying to become the kernel that works on the _GNU_ system.
So, in order to produce the Hurd kernel, the GNU system had to be mature enough. Hence the long drive to develop those things first.
Then, when the GNU system got a separate kernel to further it's development (Linux) they bothered more with developing the extra-kernel features and less on the kernel (Hurd.)
This is because the GNU project had the goal of making a fully operating system. Linux wants to be a kernel. that's its right. Xfree86 wants to be a windowing system, that's its right. GNU wants to be a fully functional system, that's its right.
and, if it can expedite the process by using other GPL'd tools, why not do that?
If there were the crazy politicians that everyone makes them to be then they would have continued to sit in their rooms and code Hurd. Also, if they had done that, they would not have gotten as far as the GNU/Linux system has today -- so they didn't. They were _pragmatic_ and went with the other projects out there that complimented theirs.
So they continue to work on their own projects? let them. They think the monolithic kernel isn't as good as the micro-kernel... that's their choice, not ours.
Just like in the linux kernel... some things _work_ but not as well as they could possibly. in the GNU system some things work (Linux), but not as well as they could work (as they believe.)
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
The following are all correct:
- The Hurd (the servers)
- The GNU Hurd (the same, but emphasizing that it's from GNU)
- GNU/Hurd (the entire operating system)
- GNU (also a name for the operating system)
The following are all wrong: HURD, the HURD, the GNU/Hurd, GNU/HURD
Cheers, GNU/Wolfgang
No Message
Good show, RMS.
This sig no verb.
though I am finding the impersonations fucking hilarious, you probably want to make this at least a somewhat useful discussion. I would advise that you get a throwaway account and email the Editors from your GNU address to let them know who's who. Just a thought.
sulli
RTFJ.
In 2001 he shared the Takeda award, with Linus Torvalds, and Ken Sakamura. Stallman's share was worth approximately $268,000.
It says here that Stallman also received the Grace Hopper award from the ACM, in 1991. In 1998 he shared the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer award with Linus Torvalds. And in 1999 he received the Yuri Rubinski Award. I don't know if these awards have any cash component.
Even though he is not a polished presence, he may be able to supplement his savings with speaker's fees. Google tells me he was chosen for the "EECS CITRIS distinguished series", next month. I wonder whether it offers more than a token honorarium?
HA HA HA HA HA...
Do anyone know how long it took to port OpenOffice from Linux/x86 to Linux/PPC??? Way to long, and porting it to darwin wich is another kernel has taken a long time... No disrespect to the guys doing the ports, they have made a terrific job, but it seems that OpenOffice isn't that portable.
if it is "Gee-Noo", "Guh-Noo", or just "Noo". Thanks in advance for the clarity.
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
It is under the GPL. The kernel API's are different, so it is just as much work to port another pthreads library as it is to write one.
Hi, May I have your attention please? May I have your attention please? Will the real GNU/Wolfgang please stand up? ... we're going to have a problem here!
Cheers,
GNU/Wolfgang
You are one old mosterfokker. Care for a spongebath?
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.