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First Program Executed on L4 Port of GNU/HURD
wikinerd writes "The GNU Project was working on a new OS kernel called HURD from 1990, using the GNU Mach microkernel. However, when HURD-Mach was able to run a GUI and a browser, the developers decided to start from scratch and port the project to the high-performance L4 microkernel. As a result development was slowed by years, but now HURD developer Marcus Brinkmann made a historic step and finished the process initialization code, which enabled him to execute the first software on HURD-L4. He says: 'We can now easily explore and develop the system in any way we want. The dinner is prepared!'"
haha yeah right like hurd will ever be completed.
I don't have anything to say, nor did I even bother to read the FA. Ha ha ha.
Oh you Unix guys.
Linux doesn't work that well. No, hear me out. The design isn't very good, and it's starting to show. The fact that you need to be root to mount things, and the trouble with reiser4, are showing the flaws in the VFS layer. The confusion over what belongs in the SCSI subsystem, with atapi cd drives being moved out of it because linus doesn't like them there but everything else being rapidly moved in there, betrays deeper problems - I have been told that the scsi subsystem should be used for everything, but since the IDE one was put together first for linus' cheap hardware, ide uses that. And yet some things are being moved into the ide subsystem, and the scsi one is not as nice as it could be if it was moved up a layer where it seems to belong. This is because linux wasn't properly designed. It was always meant to be a temporary kludge, something to work until a proper replacement came along. So some design decisions were badly made from a long term point of view, and some weren't made at all, just sort of emerged as an imperfect compromise. The problems are becoming more and more evident, and it's getting to the stage where we need a replacement.
I am trolling
So you're basically trying to say that glacial software development and many incompatible platforms is a good thing?
OS X probably is the best OS out there, but compared to what Mac users (real Mac users in the creative industries not Unix geeks who signed up when OS X appeared as a change for them from Linux) are used to in terms of UI, ease of use and good design it is pretty weak actually.
Also you talk about lack of 'standards compliance' in OS 9, but how 'standards compliant' has Windows ever been ?
MS just makes up whatever standards they want and the sheer numbers of their users will generally just go along with it.
Also to correct you, real hard core OS features like protected memory were acheived in OS 9 by Apple coders, but this was famously killed by Steve Jobs and buried in a hurry.
Many good things about OS X no doubt, but it's not there yet in terms of what it should be and most real Mac users generally agree on that. For the easily impressed and those used to Linux though, yeah it may as well be the best thing since sliced bread.
"Whould it make sense for Apple to now completely rewrite it DOWN TO THE KERNEL LEVEL?"
No of course not. It would be a complete stupid waste of time and would be incredibly damaging.
And as for HURD it's interesting, but has just been in development too long so it's just a slice of computing history now.