Slashdot Mirror
Watch Out Linux, GNU Hurd Coming
sfcrazy writes "Debian now has concrete plans to bring GNU Hurd to the larger community. GNU Hurd is expected to be released with the release of Debian 7.0 Wheezy towards the end of 2012 or beginning of 2013. Debian maintainer Samuel Thibault has already produced a Debian GNU/Hurd CD Set with a graphic installer which is available to download."
Duke Nukem Forever actually gets released and now Hurd? Pinch me I must be dreaming!
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
Oh lawd! Somebody catch me. I've caught the vapors!
Much like it's long-awaited vaporware cousin, Duke Nukem Forever, the wait will not be worth it.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
Will be the year of the Hurd Desktop. 'Nuff said.
One of the very few people to put me on her Slashdot enemies list did so because I made a derogatory statement about the length of the HURD development process. In, as I recall, the year 2000 or 2001. It was a running joke at least five years before that.
Way to be timely and relevant, GNU.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
Is the HURD even still relevant?
More relevant than your thinly-veiled attempt at grabbing first post.
Next time, either post something that genuinely adds to the discussion or nothing at all. Have a nice day.
But as for actually running it day-to-day, the Hurd never was relevant simply because it never had the broad driver support that users need. That won't change unless and until Hurd attracts a substantial developer base - but this is a good step in the direction of that.
I am trolling
BSD userland on top of GNU Hurd.
"What the hell do you call an OS like that?"
"I'll call it 'The Aristocrats'"
--
BMO
Who cares? I mean really... we have all the bases covered by Linux and BSD...
I don't really see a place for it.
It's interesting because it's been a long time coming (20+ years) but Linux and BSD seem to have filled every niche there is in that time.
I swear I saw this headline 20 years ago.
---- GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Debian maintainer Samuel Thibault has already produced a Debian GNU/Hurd CD Set with a graphic installer which is available to download.
It speaks volumes that the highlight is the inclusion of a graphical installer. Likely no mouse support though....
An organization that is out of the limelight, but has made many historic contributions is pushing something from an even older organization that has been out of the limelight for a longer time, and made many more historic contributions.
Did anyone else notice this?
Computing has moved onto mobile now. Linux only caught it due to Google. And it's barely open source.
But even then, the OS on those will not be the determinant of much. Cloud computing has come. I know people's whose home office desktops basically just run as a dumb terminal, as all that data sits on some far off server somewhere. Google Docs, Linnworks, what have you. What is old is new again. And again.
The only way to escape lock-in will always be open data formats and being able to back up that data. Chasing the OS rainbow might have been the wrong game.
Because I think an angry Stallman is a funny Stallman. So I Iook forward to this new Linux variant and I thank Linus Torvalds from the bottom of my heart. There would be no free software movement without you and you cannot be venerated enough. I wonder how Mr. Torvalds came up with Hurd? Oh wait, it is because he is a genius.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
Way to figure it out, genius.
Who cares? I mean really... we have all the bases covered by Linux and BSD...
If you need a GPLv3 licensed OS for some reason, this will be one. Linux will probably never contain the patent guards Hurd will. That might be important for some folks.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The HURD port of Duke Nukem Forever?
Seriously, it's been, what, 15+ years? The project seems to have two main phases of development:
1) Several months of intense bickering followed by factions breaking off to make half-assed attempts at porting to a more modern microkernel.
2) A year or two of complete silence as the ports are abandoned and a couple of diehards continue to work on Mach.
Where are they now? They've got a couple of novelty builds that almost work reliably enough to play with for a weekend. Big fuckken deal.
This is interesting, but last time I checked, HURD was 32-bit (for the lulz, from the start it was written ahead of its time, when 16-bit was the norm). I don't do much low level stuff, mostly python and web development, so would it be difficult to port it to x64? It will be interesting to use, though. Anybody know if it's got linux binary compatibility?
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
They have probably noticed the end of the world is December 21, 2012 and they hope it's true. That way no one will actually notice Hurd was postponed again ...
Larger than what?
If you see his nostrils flaring, it means he's about to charge. Charging Stallmans aren't able to turn very well though, so if that happens run at a 90 degree angle to the direction of his charge and you should be pretty safe.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
HURD might be interesting but they will always be playing catchup to Linux and even BSD.
nVidia drivers for HURD? VMware on HURD? [Insert Important Software Here] on HURD? Yeah, not likely to ever happen. There is too much infrastructure build on Linux. It's the de facto free OS, period.
Can you run Bitcoin on it?
I can't be the only person that's never hurd, umm, heard of it.
"The Hurd is the GNU project's replacement for UNIX, a popular operating system kernel."
From http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd/what_is_the_gnu_hurd.html
Proof: Compare this to that.
Which makes you go "awwwwwwwww, how cute."
(it's probably the biggest open-source microkernel out there)
Sure if you ignore Darwin.
Once the Duke Nukem Forever threshold has been passed anything is possible.
We are now in a place that was once unimaginable.
Someone must've switched on the Heart of Gold's Improbability Drive.
Then Linux 64 bits native Adobe Flash Reader
And Finally the HURD...
The world is coming to an end !
Planet-X was just a diversion by HURD to fool us into thinking we were free with all that Microsoft and Linux software, now we know...2012 we are in the computer and we will be synthetically disabled from ever mentaly pondering the invention of simulated silicon logic from the artificial Periodic Table of the Elements: this time HURD is using Turing effect against us, as we will lose our simulated logic and all the simulation digresses into doctrine. At least we'll level-up quicker and heal quicker, because you know -- the body can't exist without the mind.
FROM: martin-boundary
TO: jlechem
This is a pinch-a-gram. To activate, please pinch yourself.
ROFLMAO. In the corporate world, that's what engineering management says when they have no idea when they'll be ready to ship something.
Does this mean I'll actually see a GNU operating system in my lifetime?
I estimate that if I'm lucky I've got another 40-45 years.
You are welcome on my lawn.
GP was contributing; he was attempting to inform a user about a social convention that he was obviously unaware of. (That posts should contain content.) While it may not have been terribly relevant to the original HURD discussion, it was relevant to the post that he was responding to. While such off-topic tangents aren't to be encouraged, it's pretty clear that ignoring them won't do anything to help the problem, so an educational effort is probably appropriate. While it won't weed out trolls, it may help cut down on people who actually think that "FP1!!" is a socially-accepted convention here on Slashdot.
Like, after a decade?
This will be experimental software (as usual for hurd) for developers, not yet another "ready to test" alternative os ( like haiku/beos or atheos ) laking minimal modern services like a proper gui ( like gnustep / etoile )
It's a Mach microkernel with a bunch of daemons and glibc to emulate the UNIX interface.
No Gnews is good Gnews
-Gary Gnu
If anyone finds the current release schedule of GNU Hurd to be disheartening, then please make a contribution to the project. Open Source is not some manna from heaven. It depends on human coders to create software for free human consumption. It is not magic. If you have a complaint or a concern, don't post jokes; post contributions.
Way to be timely and relevant, GNU.
What could be greater show of health and vigor than naming your first release "Debian Wheezy?"
Don't get any on you! Use a cumbrella!
C|N>K
Plan 9 could use some love. Maybe someone could make it a GUI that doesn't look like it's from the late 1980s.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
it may help cut down on people who actually think that "FP1!!" is a socially-accepted convention here on Slashdot.
Sounds like someone has never gotten a FP. :3
The thundering turd has arrived! Pew pew pew!
As I recall, it was already late when I was a CS major in 1991 using GNU Emacs on SunOS.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
By the time this "pure" software is out, the rest of the world is dozens of iterations into the future. That's not freedom. That's slavery to ideology.
This reminds me of the scene in Austin Powers where the guy screams as a steamroller comes barreling at him at a couple feet per minute. And he stands there and screams for the entire two minutes it takes for the steamroller to reach him and run him over.
Hey! In two years, I'll release the bestest mesh network system ever! I promise!
Will it be shipping with Perl6 as well?
GNU Hurd is expected to be released with the release of Debian 7.0 Wheezy towards the end of 2012 or beginning of 2013.
A couple of years now. Just like cheap solar panels and sustainable fusion and the replacement for the space shuttle. Just a couple more years now.
How about you call us when it's working?
Seriously, stop telling us what you are going to do. Instead tell us what you have done. One is impressive and the other is not.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Read This to see why.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
It's still a nightmare, HL2 episode 3 is still nowhere to be seen.
Probably because millions of people do not want Episode 3.
If Valve really didn't know how to count to 3, we'd have Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2' Champion Edition, Half-Life 2 Turbo, Super Half-Life 2, Super Half-Life 2 Turbo, Super Block-Life 2 Turbo (a puzzle game), the midquel Alpha series (this is either Portal or something connected to it), and finally Half-Life 3.
It could be worse. Debian could be naming it "Wheezy Walrus", just as the first releases of another .deb-based free OS were called Warty Warthog and Hoary Hedgehog.
"I'll call it 'The Aristocrats'"
And maybe for release names, you could do like Debian and use character names from a Disney film: "The Aristocats".
I claim that there are some kinds of software that can never be free under this system of things. These include high-production-value video games and tax preparation software. What would Mr. Stallman say is wrong with this claim?
I wonder, if someone ports DRM drivers, mesa and Wayland to it... almost like Mac OS X, but with GNU userspace and a Mach kernel... I'm not saying it can't be done. Maybe I'm just crazy for such thoughts :)
Everyone wants a Tux in their life.
Not one gives a fuck about this shit nor do they care about Linsux.
Hurd is coming out? Just when HP thought they were don't with him... he's coming back
seriously whose the idiot , are they copying ubuntu so they too can get bent over.
Duke Nukem Forever actually gets released and now Hurd?
Yeah but Hurd will only lets you run two processes at once.
Including Bash.
Something about a side effect of "bringing the object through the rift".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Wait... it's 2011
Well that depends on if you start at 0.
They might have said the 2012th year...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Too many people forget this that the worst product on the market trumps the best intentions. I get rather tired of hearing statements hating on a given product because $replacement_x will be so much better. Doesn't matter if $replacement_x is not out. I need something now, not at some indefinite point in the future.
Then of course you get things like HURD that have been delayed to the point of being laughable. I don't even want to hear anything from them except for "It is out now," or "The project has been killed." With a (non)development cycle this long they need to STFU otherwise.
Right, so there is no room for AmigaOS or Haiku, etc, etc, etc,?
We have choice and they can learn from each other, and create things their individual development paths result in, but which might not have come to be, had there only been two single tracks.
Given all the distance 'GNU Linux' has gone, if they were going to make something, and given all the delays, and the fact that nobody was really waiting for it, why not make the MINIX kernel the basis of the OS? (Yeah, yeah, I know that Minix uses a BSD license, as opposed to GPL, but they can apply all non-Minix parts of the OS to it).
So will HURD be like Debian's Linux offerings, and just have GNOME and GNUSTEP as GUI offerings? Or will it offer a wider variety, including KDE? Is it all rms' call?
In which case, they should have simply canned the project!!! After all, you had all the Linux's, all the BSDs and now, you even have Minix3, which is a real micro-kernel based architecture. In fact, a fully featured version of Minix3 - complete w/ drivers, GUIs and apps - would be really handy, instead of just another 'free' OS that offers little differentiation from Linux, other than it's a GNU OS and Linux ain't. Or they could even have made HURD a non-Unix OS, providing the X environment & the GUI only all the services it requires, but nothing more.
What. The. Fuck. I thought this was one of those auto-generated spam posts of random words and letters at first glance. Are you drunk?
I have wondered if the Bills making prudent draft picks for once was a sign of the apocalypse. (failed draft picks have not helped the team's suckitude the past few years. I can see why they went for building up their defense this time - Fitzpatrick is a decent QB and his offense at least a few times put up a lot of points only to see the defense allow even more points.)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
From the minutes of the March 2011 FTPMaster meeting if it's not ready for some sort of release it will be evicted from the main archives.
The TODO list is getting better ... but we shall see.
Damn it, I'm still yawning and there's still no message.
If that can actually be done safely and efficiently, it also means a non-free driver can't crash the kernel or fuck up other drivers. I would guess there are security implications as well.
Right now, a bug in the nVidia kernel driver on Linux could compromise the security of the entire machine, or crash the entire OS, or flip some bit in some other unconnected kernel system (or userland process), and it's hard enough to debug these things when you do have source code. So wanting an untainted kernel makes a lot of sense.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Arch Hurd is already available so no need to wait for Debian to release anything if you want to try it out. http://www.archhurd.org/
The man who is the father of the Mach Microkernel and one of the key engineers at NeXT is no where mentioned concerning the Mach Microkernel history on the Hurd's web site. Truly shows no respect towards history. You'd think Rashid was Linus Torvalds and the sole creator of Mach. Not even close.
Well, if one is lucky, it could go the way of Taligent's Pink, OS/2 for PPC/Workplace OS, Windows Server for Itanium, and a few more.
On a different note, is it possible to have a completely non-GNU 'free' OS, based on just a Linux kernel, but on top of it, only non-GNU components? In other words, no GNOME, no Emacs, no GCC, no GTK, etc? Maybe something like Linux + KDE + KApps (KOffice, Konqueror and a whole bunch of other K suites) and other non-GNU apps like VLC Media, etc?
This posting illustrates something very interesting: Why slashdot is irrelevant.
Any community that becomes so ingrained in the belief that it is superior is bound for failure. Because once you start believing no one can be better than you, you start to become complacent. The architecture on which HURD is based is technically superior to Linux. Whether this technical superiority translates to superiority in the marketplace is another issue entirely.
In my opinion the slashdot community consists of a lot of wannabes and not a whole lot of doers. Instead of criticizing and making fun of projects which are new or different why don't you embrace them and welcome them? This is one of the reasons I think the open source community has stagnated in recent years.
GC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
I know; couldn't resist. lol
I'm afraid people will call it "Linux" anyway (and Stallman will need pills for his stomach), by now OS names are associated to OS "flavors" instead of specific releases.
Not to me , i was born in 1986.
If I had mod points I'd mod you down. Just for not being a grumpy old git like me.
Speaking of HP, since everyone - Microsoft, RedHat, Oracle, Suse are all dropping support for its Itanium servers, sounds like a golden opportunity for HURD!!!
Why not take this Debian Wheezy Hurd, and port it to the Integrity servers, of course w/ HP's help? Yeah, they have HP/UX, but they'll sure be happy that somebody is embracing them, instead of dropping support. Of course, they may have to struggle w/ some of Stallman's ethical dilemmas, like having proprietary software such as vjfs, but since this project is from Debian, they might be more accommodating. Some Hurd developers might even derive an income from such activity from HP.
At this stage of the game, what do they have to lose?
Darwin doesn't count. Stallman hasn't managed to sink his filthy little fingers into any part of it, so evangelical open-sourcers pretend it doesn't exist. That or they don't realise that Darwin is open sourced and by far the most widely-used desktop UNIX.
Problem w/ that is that there are countless FOSS projects in the world, most of them w/ inadequate support (except from companies like Red Hat). So instead of supporting newer ones that don't bring anything new to the table, why not work on enriching the features of current FOSS projects, instead of always forking them? The 'community' seems to follow the cliche - 'When you come to a fork in the road, take it!'
There is so much of stuff that could be done for the Linux distributions already out there. How about FOSS drivers for the best selling new hardware out there, be it Wi-Fi controllers, GPUs, tablet mousepads (like Wacom) and so on? How about making GNUstep, GNOME3, KDE, et al easily installable on all platforms w/ minimal dependency interruptions? How about making installation packages that run on all distributions, regardless of RPM/YUMM/DEB/TAR.GZ formats? How about making some simple video-editing software (equivalent to Windows Movie Maker, not some complicated thing like Cinerella) that will run on all FOSS OSs? Or enrich the feature set of KOffice to match that of MS Office 2010? IPv6 is now starting to be introduced - why not have FOSS versions of IPAM, DHCP6, DNS6 and other IPv6 management software that will bring that functionality to all OSs? Or FOSS CAD tools that won't cost an arm & a leg? Or FOSS virtualization software? Sounds better than having variations of GNUstep OSs - Afterstep, LinuxStep & Window-Maker.
Seems to me that that would be a lot more useful than coming out w/ a new distribution of Linux, BSD or now HURD. I mean, even if one came out w/ it, why would the average user suddenly switch to that from RHEL, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Minix3, Scientific Linux or whatever else it is that s/he is using? Instead, make something that will be easily installable and fully functional on all these platforms, so that one can enhance their value, and what's better.
Sounds like a much better focus for developers, and might even make the 'community' a lot more appreciated outside its circle!
Just a small point (I do get the gist of what you're saying): /. is not representative of the open source community.
Some guy from GNUStep is calling Slashdot irrelevant? Glass houses, my good sir.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I wonder if HURD will be a good basis for an efficient mobile OS? Has anyone heard about the resource requirements?
GP is from GNUstep? They did actually release a Debian-Linux based GNUstep OS on a CD, so I wouldn't call them irrelevant. Yeah, they could do a lot more to make it a part of standard Linux distributions, but they are nowhere as backward as HURD in delivering what they set out to do.
I do wish GNUstep were as widely distributed as KDE & GNOME.
Bravo
So we know that RMS was the 1st user, and not alone anymore. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJOuoyoMhj8
and why aren't you doing something productive instead of posting here?
Irrelevant as a Hub of OSS tinkerers.
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/klee/misc/slashdot.html
(anonymous because I alredy modded)
Darwin isn't a microkernel, it's a hybrid.
Darwin != OSX.
Further, were it not for all the added bits that turn it into OS X%
Community? If you consider this any sort of community I feel you are mistaken. I think half the Slashdot users simply signed up so they could bicker without being ignored for posting as AC... Oh, and we get mod points so we can use our invisible hands to raise up the opinions we agree with and demolish the ones we don't. Perhaps if you had said "The Ubuntu Community" you'd have something closer to "a lot of wannabes and not a whole lot of doers" but even then I don't know why you'd care about the wannabes in the first place - just count the doers.
Hurd is relevant. Not so much because it might someday produce a working system, but because it tries to do things right.
Take one example: One of the most often needed changes to make some software working in HURD is PATH_MAX. The standard says, that if there is a limit of file name length, then that preprocessor symbol should be defined and be that limit. But nowadays there no longer is a limit, and if there is a limit, then it is file system specific, and seldom OS specific.
But many software just assumes it is always defined and uses it for static array length.
Lazy systems like Linux just define some randomly large value, the software runs out of the box, much memory is wasted and you never really know if everything works and once you get near that limit you might run into problems.
The Hurd does the correct thing and does not define it, as there is no limit. That means people caring for Hurd have to fix all the broken software out there, for this and many other little things. So even if Hurd will never produce a system suiteable for real world work, it has improved the overall software quality a lot, so everyone else profits.
Forgetting Licensing and Patenting issues for a moment -
What are the advantages of using a Hurd based debian over a linux based one?
Are there any performance benefits or architecural differences that make it better in some way?
Why might i want to use hurd other than for psuedo political reasons?
Nick ...
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Because by pitying somebody, and be sorry for somebody doesn't make progress. You have to go there, and _prove_. So many perfect ideas and technologies fail because they are not the fit for _today_. The critical property for technology is _time_, and the critical property for a man is _intuition_ to sense a technology for the time(for today).
I am familiar with Hurd principles and architecture, and from the perspective of a tech. person it's a great one. But man, if it doesn't work _today_, it doesn't work. You should not forget that not with a machine you live, but with people. Machines are for machines, and people are for people. Instead of calling somebody a wannabe you should try to be smart and make those around you smarter. This requires patience, and if you don't have it a great chance you will fail both with machines and with people. Be persistent, but learn patience. Good luck.
Bad examples. AmigaOS and Haiku are quite different from other alternatives. HURD lets you run a subset of the programs that work on other *NIX systems, slowly, on a subset of the hardware that other *NIX systems support. Oh, and with a less permissive license. If you want a GNU-flavoured system, there are already lots of GNU/Linux systems you can use. If you want a solid UNIX system, there are a few BSD flavours to choose from. If you want an actively-developed POSIX-compliant microkernel, there's Minix 3. HURD is just there for the everything-must-be-GNU crowd. It exists for political, not technical, reasons.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Agreed, people should welcome new projects. But stagnation? I think there is reason to be more optimistic than this.
My Linux desktop has never been so stable, productive or cool looking as it is today. In work, every server I connect to these days is running Linux. There was a time when I found I had to use a mix of closed/open tools to get the job done. These days everything I and my company does is powered by Open Source projects.
I don't see any stagnation. I see constant innovation at an ever increasing rate. And long may it continue! :)
Hurd is not new. Hurd has been in a perpetual "it's almost ready; just wait 12 months"-state since before Windows was released. Making fun of a "It will be ready by the end of next year, we promise!" is the only correct reaction.
...projects which are new or different...
HURD is none of that.
HURD is a mutually recursive acronym, standing for HIRD of Unix-replacing daemons, where HIRD stands for HURD of interfaces representing depth. As both hurd and hird are just alternate spellings for the English word herd, the full name GNU Hurd is also a play on the words herd of gnus, reflecting how the kernel works.
I've got September being the month that Steve Ballmer starts to intimate Hurd is infringing on Microsoft patents.
The parent poster illustrates something very interesting: Why having a sense of humor and self-irony is still relevant.
Also, ignoring the "I'm better than you"-irony in your post, "technically superior to Linux" can easily be discussed. I think the kernel community would gladly point out that "the best technology" quickly becomes irrelevant if it's impossible to work with (say if takes two decades of flip-flopping just to release something people can use). And having "developer friendliness" as part of the "rate this technology"-bar is not far fetched, unless you actually want said technology to be: Irrelevant.
Someday maybe a HURD distribution will be released, and someday maybe HURD will surpass the market share of Linux. Until then, chill out and enjoy the source.
slashdot community is for porn! :D
The architecture on which HURD is based is technically superior to Linux.
Citation needed.
This posting illustrates something very interesting: Why slashdot is irrelevant.
Any community that becomes so ingrained in the belief that it is superior is bound for failure. Because once you start believing no one can be better than you, you start to become complacent. The architecture on which HURD is based is technically superior to Linux. Whether this technical superiority translates to superiority in the marketplace is another issue entirely.
In my opinion the slashdot community consists of a lot of wannabes and not a whole lot of doers. Instead of criticizing and making fun of projects which are new or different why don't you embrace them and welcome them? This is one of the reasons I think the open source community has stagnated in recent years.
GC
Because taking the piss is far more amusing to us in our juvenile little minds.
In all seriousness though, the big problem is that GNU Hurd has just been going on too long. You might notice that many people are comparing it to Duke Nukem, this is because they have both been successively over hyped for too many years. It is like people crying wolf, eventually the would be rescuers just stop listening and let you get eaten.
I started reading this thinking that GNU Hurd had finally found some developers an was on course for a stable release in the near future. After looking around the site it seems that you only have 4 or 5 active developers and are in dire need of more people to make the Wheezy release. If this is the case then try and ask the community for help, cap in hand with humility. You are far more likely to bring developers to the system by that than by simply posting a projected release date which may or may not be achievable.
You are right though when you say the slashdot community has changed a great deal as it certainly has. But some of the people here are still exactly the people you would like to bring to your projects, either GNU Step or Hurd or whatever. The trick is to appeal to them and ignore the mass of immature wanna bees you are so critical of.
The whole problem with hurd has never been a technical shortcoming, it has always been that the people leading the project lacked the people skills needed. Thats certainly not to say that Linus is perfect in this regard, but something certainly made more people throw time at his pet Linux project all those years ago.
I dont read
Are you trying to illustrate your words by acting as if you were yourself really "superior" ?
I heard about hurd long time ago and it was already a long time project. I heard it will soon be released so many time that I can't count them. I even actually spoke with people working on it (about ten years ago) that were assuring me that the project was on the run for a stable release.
Ten years later, I'm acting as supervisor for student writing their own kernels every year: in 4 years of activities I have seen about 7 kernel projects reaching an "interesting state", and those kernel were all "experimental" in their own way: micro-kernel, coded in some specific language (D, OCaml ... ), fully modularized, coded for exotic architectures ... All are single-man project done by students.
Booting and reaching the state were drivers and userland are the next checkpoint is not so hard, even when you deal with "new inner architecture". But keeping a project really active so that you reach a stable state, is much harder, and it seems that hurd fails on that matter.
Hurd might have been "new" twenty years ago, but for now, it is just another not-working micro-kernel.
(oh, mind your respect, should I talk about GNUstep ?)
Marwan Burelle co-Head of EPITA's System Laboratory
Mach has just horrible performance in the real world. What happened to the plan to refactor Hurd around a better design?
Why is it superior? Just because it's a microkernel?
Microkernels were the darling of OS research for almost the entirely of the 90's. But by the end of the 90's, most researchers had had enough. The alleged gains in configurability, reliability, security, and so on never materialized; but what never disappeared was the fact that they were stinking slow. Context switching is a fundamental limitation of such an architecture. And from what I've heard, a lot more complicated to program -- which leads to more programming errors and ugly performance hacks to compensate for any potential increase in reliability, security and so on they might have gained.
It's possible that Hurd has managed to overcome these limitations. But it has definitely earned its reputation of being slow and cumbersome; if that has changed, the burden of proof is on the Hurd community.
There are a few True Believers out there, still working on Hurd and Minix and L4 and the like, but they have yet to produce anything shown to be worth using.
I think the fact that Andrew Tanenbaum riduculed Linux in 1993 for being an "outdated architecture", when Minix just got paging working last year after 20 years of development, encapsulates my point completely.
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
Followed the link until I here:
/proc/version
;)
http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd/running/debian.html
So to try it I downloaded and ran in in qemu as per the instructions.
Playing around a bit I noticed this:
root@debian:~# uname -a
GNU debian 0.3 GNU-Mach 1.3.99/Hurd-0.3 i686-AT386 GNU
root@debian:~# cat
Linux version 2.6.1 (GNU 0.3 GNU-Mach 1.3.99/Hurd-0.3 i686-AT386)
So maybe you're right in calling it Linux
This posting illustrates something very interesting: Why slashdot is irrelevant.
Any community that becomes so ingrained in the belief that it is superior is bound for failure. Because once you start believing no one can be better than you, you start to become complacent. The architecture on which HURD is based is technically superior to Linux. Whether this technical superiority translates to superiority in the marketplace is another issue entirely.
In my opinion the slashdot community consists of a lot of wannabes and not a whole lot of doers. Instead of criticizing and making fun of projects which are new or different why don't you embrace them and welcome them? This is one of the reasons I think the open source community has stagnated in recent years.
GC
I agree.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
--The architecture on which HURD is based is technically superior to Linux.
I agree in some respects.
HURD is superior to linux in some ways (modularity, organization, maintainability, simplicity and most of all, bloat). In other ways it isn't (performance and maturity).
HURD is getting better but it's got a LONG way to go. It has to not be dog slow. Until that happens, no one will use it.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
And you really don't want him to interject you.
Nonsense.
An architecture is superior for a given purpose, or judged by a particular standard. There isn't some magic score card which can declare an architecture to be plainly superior.
HURD will be clean. Plan9 was clean (and I have a fondness for it). I also prototype some logic in Haskell but know full well why most production code isn't written in it.
Linux is a bit of a mess. So is BSD. So is every general purpose operating system that has ever been fielded for a significant period. The warts come from being adapted to serve many different purposes, and working around many real world problems that clean-room architecture gets to just ignore. And getting some of it wrong and only fixing some of it halfway because it turns out that in real deployments (not just "the market"), clean isn't the most important thing people need from an OS.
Building a fresh OS, even over two decades, is impressive. Most Slashdotters couldn't do it. But, seriously, many research OS's have been written and shelved since HURD was started, and none of them have run around insisting they were the second coming. HURD has some neat ideas. But it's getting mocked because it's been presented with the kind of pretension and arrogance you only get away with if you deliver perfectly and on time.
I'm switching to Hurd. Can't wait for version 0.0.2 in 2032!
Someday maybe a HURD distribution will be released,
You see the difference is the "maybe". We hear this "maybe" for years, since 1991 as far as I know. I was 16, I'm 36 now.
I think the fact that Andrew Tanenbaum riduculed Linux in 1993 for being an "outdated architecture", when Minix just got paging working last year after 20 years of development, encapsulates my point completely.
MINIX 1 & 2 were teaching tools. MINIX 3, which is "loosely based somewhat on previous versions of MINIX," wants to not only be a teaching tool, but also be a serious option for small & embedded systems. Also, this new version of MINIX has only been in active development for about six years.
Anyways, I've rambled on enough. You can read more about it here: here and here
I will be interested when it is actually finished and incorporated in a distro as end-user friendly as Ubuntu.
With the proliferation of cores in modern CPUs/GPUs, the context switching overhead may become less of an issue.
Is hardware finally catching up with HURD? .llort.
...I might've cared. Hurd is an interesting idea from a CS research PoV, but it's taken so long to come out that Linux and the BSDs have long since filled any niche it might've had in the real world.
"My life's work has been to prompt others... and be forgotten." --Cyrano de Bergerac
For those too lazy to use a search engine:
http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/community/weblogs/ArneBab/technical-advantages-of-the-hurd.html
Hurd is based on the Mach microkernel which happens to be the same microkernel that OS X uses, so I think it's fair to say that microkernels are here, working and aren't 'stinking slow'.
Instead of criticizing and making fun of projects which are new or different why don't you embrace them and welcome them?
I believe today's article on fanboyism is relevant here. We might have a built-in predisposition to agressively defending a "brand" and ignoring any evidence that another brand is either better or indistinguishable.
Your argument made sense 15 years ago, but today our desktop systems are 2.x GHz behemoths that spend 99% of their life in idle cycles.
I think you have problems with the definition of the word "evict":
"It may then reenter the main archive whenever it is ready to get released with the next release."
\Any community that becomes so ingrained in the belief that it is superior is bound for failure.
How is that working out for the Microsoft and the Apple communities so far? ;)
SunOS userland on top of GNU Hurd
"What the hell do you call an OS like that?"
"I don't know, but since the compiler stopped, RMS has been having a stroke in that corner over there..."
After reading the news, some documentation on the Hurd web site, I still doesn't understand quite well what is Hurd. The project seams interesting in a way, but I'm still not sure how it's work. It's look like a Kernel, but run on multiple server at once, give a filesystem abstraction layer (a la FUSE).
May I ask whats it's purpose ?
"If this is the case then try and ask the community for help, cap in hand with humility."
Given the total ignorance that the internet community has for the hurd it is probably better that the development is left to the few who are willing to put in the time and effort to understand the problem correctly so that they can make meaningful contributions.
The Hurd is radically different platform for application and OS development. Linux is no more than another POSIX implementation and the concepts are well known to all so it is easier to get contributions from the mainstream community.
"Just because it's a microkernel?"
you make this assertion that it is "just a microkernel" and then you proceed to tear that concept apart.
But your failure is the the assumption that "it's just a microkernel", it's clear you have read none of the hurd design docs and your assumption is faulty.
You say "the fact that they were stinking slow" and that just sounds funny given today's modern virus-ridden desktops that spend 99+% of their CPU cycles in idle more.
I have never seen such ignorant arguments:
- Conflation of development time with product quality: "Minix just got paging working last year" Last I heard, quality products take MORE time to develop, not less.
- Complaints of "inefficiency" when the target platform has 10X the necessary compute power for the task at hand.
- Complaints about "long development time" when compared to the 20+ years that it has took for BSD to achieve commercial success in the market as OSX.
If any of you people would actually stop to read the hurd design docs you would realize that it has already had influence on your desktop. FUSE and SELinux are bolted-on implementations of concepts that were first fleshed out and implemented in the hurd.
What does javascript performance have to do with operating system overhead?
The modern desktop computer spends far less than 1% of its cycles executing kernel code. My argument stands.
"HURD is just there for the everything-must-be-GNU crowd. It exists for political, not technical, reasons."
Seemingly you could make that argument. However, the purpose of the two example i gave was that they weren't Linux (or *nix) and offered interesting features based on different development paths, that may not have otherwise come to be. Such as the great RAM disk feature in AmigaOS, whereby you can install new programs to RAM, for testing purposes. Or the pervasive tabbing applications feature in Haiku.
Point being, there is always room at the party for people to come up with radically different OSs, and that there are certainly things to be gained from that. Besides, if people choose to dedicate their time to these projects, they obviously see value in them, even if that is just a focus on 'purity' (in this case), and who is anyone else to say these projects are worthless, especially in the case of Hurd, when we haven't see what it has to offer, in the long run.
This has nothing to do with which product is technically superior or who's feeling superior to whom. It has everything to do with the fact that since the release of Duke Nukem Forever, the Hurd is the world's most notorious instance of vaporware. That's what all the sniggering is about, and who can blame us?
And even if your point were true (and it's not), that somehow means that Slashdot is irrelevant? That's a total non sequitur.
Developers of HURD think HURD is superior to the competition. Film at 11.
I guess we should have specified that we wanted an INDEPENDENT look at whether the HURD was superior.
What do you mean "new"? I've been refreshing the Hurd pages for years (can't get involved too much if there isn't a thing I can boot). Someone mentioned ArchHurd. I went and downloaded it. Want to install it in VirtualBox. Seems stuck so far with some "probing".
Past the probing. Installation guide:
Currently GNU Mach does not support SATA, USB, PCMCIA, sound, or wireless networking. [...] However, there is currently work on porting DDE linux26 to GNU Mach, which would bring support for hardware drivers from Linux 2.6.29.
There neither a date of when work started, a date when this statement was last updated or an ETA.
In other news, I'm working on a Warp drive, which will bring FTL travel some time in the future (can't say when).
Must reboot after partitioning to re-read the partition table. It's very superior, I'll give you that :)
The Hurd is radically different platform for application and OS development. Linux is no more than another POSIX implementation and the concepts are well known to all so it is easier to get contributions from the mainstream community.
But isn't that itself part of the problem? If you're going to introduce something that's a paradigm shift, you either need to get a lot of people to shift with you or relegate yourself to "also-ran" status while a small group continue to work on it. Linux gained traction because in its day there was just nothing like it out there. Operating systems were closed, limited or just plain useless to most and Linux filled a niche that could just as easily have been filled with HURD. But HURD is a day late and a dollar short; that ship has sailed.
Because it's a radically different platform for application and OS development, you're going to find a lot of resistance to developing on it simply because it's too different. Linux had the advantage of building on what had come before, and for all its warts has become hugely successful as a result. These days, for most of what people wish to accomplish, Linux is a known, well documented and stable platform for which to write. It's also "good enough" in most instances that the extra work involved in developing to a new paradigm just isn't worth it.
Like it or not, because of this commercial support for developing for HURD is going to be a long time coming if it comes at all. At least for the immediate to mid-term future, HURD developers are going to be in low demand but also low supply... which means salaries are often going to be higher for a HURD developer. A manager looking to build his empire isn't going to use HURD unless he's got some agenda beyond just making money; he's going to use Linux and hire a half dozen entry level Linux hackers for the price of one HURD developer. And that's assuming HURD even gains any traction at all in the corporate space, which let's face it is one of the things that really pushed Linux to the success it has met today.
I may be wrong, but HURD is a solution to a problem that was already solved twenty years ago. The world has moved on, and now we're looking for solutions for other problems. Maybe HURD will be the answer to one of them, I don't know... but until Linux is no longer "good enough" to make work I just don't see it.
Your choice! We'll check back in another ten years and see how you're doing.
I keep hearing how HURD is simple and maintainable, but nobody seems to be able to get it running. That's not "simple and maintainable" in my book...
The open source developer community hasn't stagnated, it's just slashdot that has lost touch with it.
I don't think Andrew Tanenbaum taking 20 years to do something somehow compares to Linus doing anything. Simply put, each programmer has a different coding pace. Some write more code lines, some write less but more effective, some are good at fixing bugs, some are good at creating them, etc. Maybe Andrew simply wasn't looking for paging as a first objective? Just look at the development speed of git, you get Linus and other rabid kernel developers pissed at scm software and suddenly excellent programs springs out of nowhere. And just like Linux, everybody says it's crap, ad hoc, but hey, I wish I was able to do something like that.
Now, imagine if these guys were put to write HURD or something similar. Maybe their progress would be different as well.
Well then I hope Hurd is 20 years better
Wow, they used to talk about Hurd back when I still had a job in this industry. Did the Indians or Chinese finish it up?
"If this is the case then try and ask the community for help, cap in hand with humility."
Given the total ignorance that the internet community has for the hurd it is probably better that the development is left to the few who are willing to put in the time and effort to understand the problem correctly so that they can make meaningful contributions.
The Hurd is radically different platform for application and OS development. Linux is no more than another POSIX implementation and the concepts are well known to all so it is easier to get contributions from the mainstream community.
This kind of assumes that not one single person out there could come on board and actually bring anything worthwhile to the project, which is a very arrogant attitude. If you asked for help you might get a lot of piss taking from ignoramuses, you might also get a single person who actually helps and that one person is why you ask. The single person makes it worthwhile with their contribution to the project.
Go and read the email that accompanied Linus's first ever code drop for an exercise in humility and how to bring other people on board a project. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux). He started by aiming low and setting an easily achievable goal that motivated many people to try and help. Hurd seems to have always moved the goalposts out of sight whenever things started looking promising and that massively de-motivates people who have worked for a goal, even if they do acknowledge the new goal is a better idea.
I dont read
I got modded down for this comment - perhaps because I made what could have been taken as a negative comment about the Ubuntu community. I use Ubuntu and am loosely a part of the community - which contains a lot of people with bad opinions who put in little to no effort to make things better. The thing is those people are for the most part just ignored. That was my point. I have nothing against Ubuntu - I love it (I also love Debian).
Surely the final arrival of GNU Hurd must be the seventh sign.
Instead of criticizing and making fun of projects which are new or different why don't you embrace them and welcome them?
Wait a minute--I thought this was about Hurd. Are we instead discussing something new?
There are plenty of parents that are younger than Hurd; "new" hardly seems to be a reasonable word to use when discussing it.
hawk
Some guy from GNUStep is calling Slashdot irrelevant? Glass houses, my good sir.
Wow... Ad Hominem much? And if you don't know what that means, perhaps you should dig out a latin textbook someplace and learn something.
But you see, you've proven my point here. You reject GNUstep because it's not GNOME or C++ or something else you're used to. You reject it just because it's the thing to do. Because the herd does it. You do this to HURD in the same manner.
What I'm asking the community to do is to take a step back from all of this sycophantic bullsh*t and take a critical look at itself. What good has this exclusionary attitude had for the open source community? None. The only good it has done is to force many, potentially good, projects into non-existence.
GC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
...they need to go write their own OS where proprietary drivers are okay, because we Linux users don't want them.
Fuck you, you do not speak for all Linux users.
I would much prefer an open source driver to a proprietary one, all things being equal. All things are not equal. As cool as AMD has been lately, their proprietary Linux drivers still have far better 3D performance than the open ones.
More importantly, I run proprietary software on Linux, even proprietary software I've paid for! I'm ok with that.
I would still rather my system be open source, and I would especially like it if the proprietary stuff I run (even drivers) was properly sandboxed. I find myself wondering why I should be forced to trust this gigantic binary blob from nVidia more than I trust the JavaScript running on any random website. I understand the technical reasons why this is needed right now, but if something like HURD can solve them, I'm all for that.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I think the fact that Andrew Tanenbaum riduculed Linux in 1993 for being an "outdated architecture", when Minix just got paging working last year after 20 years of development, encapsulates my point completely.
I understood your argument up to this point, but then you had to resort to a "he didn't add this to minix until 20 years after it was started, so he must suck" argument which, in spite of it being dressed up in technical language is another "argument against the man" (i.e. Ad Hominem) attack against someone who has spoke out against Linux.
It's easy to find fault in the person making the argument. What's harder is to argue the actual point. Part of the issue with microkernels is that, yes, they are, typically, quite slow... but that's not what I was referring to. More specifically I was referring to the translators which run in userspace on HURD. This is a powerful capability which Linux doesn't have. It illustrates a fundamental element of design which is something that HURD can leverage in the future.
Personally, if it's all about technical superiority, I think we should all be using Plan9 OS.... but that's just me. ;)
But you also have to remember.... the machines they were judging Mach and other microkernels on at the time were not very powerful. Today's machines are orders of magnitude faster. I believe that such an architecture would have no problems on todays hardware.
GC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
I did some research, and according to this article, although OSX does use Mach, it is nonetheless not a microkernel:
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
It wasn't an ad hominem attack. It's about the "True Believer" nature I've seen in many people who work on microkernels (including Tanenbaum and some guys I've met working on L4). The main argument against microkernels is that most of the people trying to implement them are more interested in academic concepts, and are completely uninterested in actually making something that works well. Paging is basic operating system functionality. If you've had an OS for 20 years and have either been unable to implement paging, or didn't think that paging was an important capability to prioritize, then I think there's something wrong with your judgement.
Now someone else responded that Minix 1 and 2 were only meant to be teaching tools, and 3 is his first attempt at making something useful. Maybe there's something to that. If I were to write the post again, I probably wouldn't include that jibe.
OK, so what's this translator about and why does it make HURD so much awesomer? :-)
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
"In my opinion the slashdot community consists of a lot of wannabes and not a whole lot of doers." - by borgheron (172546) on Friday July 15, @02:36AM (#36772380) Homepage
See subject-line, & if you get the best of them in a debate, they troll & stalk you modding down your posts instead of trying to take you "head on" technically (because they fail in that constantly, because of what you stated, being mere "wannabes" & trolls, instead of putting their noses to the grindstone & helping improve their OS "Weapon-Of-Choice").
For instance, for all the "Pro-Linux" sentiment around here, I thought this was funnier than hell today as news:
---
Microsoft Developer Made the Most Changes To Linux 3.0 Code:
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/07/16/2316251/Microsoft-Developer-Made-the-Most-Changes-To-Linux-30-Code
---
That really SHOULD have said something like "slashdot developers made the most changes to linux 3.0 code", but because of the truths in your statement? The case is not that...
(There are some talented people here though, & yes, from the Linux "camp", but they are by FAR, the minority vs. the percentage of trolling wannabes!)
APK
P.S.=> About time someone said it... I am glad you did! Perhaps it will inspire the "ne'er-do-wells" around here to finally get their act together & learn enough about their OS of choice in Linux, or become proficient enough in software programming to do so...
... apk
... It has to be completely de-coupled and independent of Stallman's Utopian dreams. Maybe a good goal for it could be to make it just a simple microkernel (not necessarily GNU Mach, but consider other alternatives like Minix3) w/ a whole bunch of drivers alongside, and then have GNUstep run on top of it. That way, there will at least be a higher level rationale for promoting it. Yeah, yeah, the same could be done by GNUstep on Linux (like it already runs on a Debian Linux), but as far as the GNU foundation goes, that's at least a pure GNU solution worth pursuing.
I don't know what Étoilé is, so that would be good to know.
But I do know of a GNUstep OS - namely the GNUstep interface on top of Debian Linux. Downloaded the image and created the CD, and even installed it on my laptop once. Only problem - it didn't do the usual creation of root, just prompted me to create my user name. I actually wanted to have some multiple user profiles on it, but didn't get how to do it in a way that only the root would have admin privileges, and not others. Ultimately, I installed a RHEL fork instead that had a whole bunch of software bundled w/ it.
I would like to see GNUstep become a standard part of offerings from Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu and others. Including HURD :-)
Actually, from what he wrote, he believes any proprietary software is unethical, and in an interview he once gave, he used Microsoft as an example - he doesn't believe it should exist, but that it should be taken over by the government and all its code released into the wild. But he doesn't disagree w/ the existence of other software that's released under other licenses, except some that he considers de-facto proprietary (like the TrollTech license). Apparently, in his perfect world, he gets to decide who exists and who doesn't.
That doesn't undermine the central point of what you wrote - namely, that Stallman has a totalitarian approach to this, despite his claims to stand for freedom. Anyone who's seen his website and is aware of his championing of fringe Leftist causes worldwide shouldn't be surprised by his Stallinist approach to this. A lot of FOSS advocates, like Eric Raymond, are of the live-and-let-live type, but not Stallman. And given all the rifts he's created w/ all his former allies - be it Torvalds, Raymond, Bob Young, the Debian people, et al, the asset of his technical expertise is far outweighed by the liability of his political activism, which is largely responsible for the damaging perception in the marketplace of the FOSS community being anti-business.
VMware, otoh, can never be free, since it includes Windows, as well as Windows licenses that are payable to M$.
That'd be like saying other virtualization tools can never be free because they include UNIX. Stallman wanted a Free alternative to UNIX, so he started GNU, and the various GNU variants (GNU/Linux, GNU/kFreeBSD, and GNU/HURD) can run in a Free virtualization tool (VirtualBox by Oracle). Others wanted a Free alternative to Windows, so they started ReactOS.
GNU Herd = New Turd ... enough said
Is a normal universe now infinitely improbable?
Slashdot's name? When my compiler sees
> I think the fact that Andrew Tanenbaum riduculed Linux in 1993 for being an "outdated architecture", when Minix just got paging working last year after 20 years of development, encapsulates my point completely.
Not really: It just shows, that Linux has a lot more developers.
If this is the case then try and ask the community for help, cap in hand with humility. You are far more likely to bring developers to the system by that than by simply posting a projected release date which may or may not be achievable.
Actually that’s what we’re doing. We don’t say “that’s the Hurd release”, but “at that date we want to be ready for Debian to include Hurd, too. If you want to help , porting is a great way”. It’s in the original news entry. But we can’t control, what people make of it
Thats certainly not to say that Linus is perfect in this regard, but something certainly made more people throw time at his pet Linux project all those years ago.
Well: Linux worked when it was needed. Then came momentum and avoiding big fuckups (like stating “now we are Hurd/L4” before having Hurd on L4 in the same state as Hurd on Mach -- yes, that was a monumental communication fuckup).
You reject it just because it's the thing to do. Because the herd does it. You do this to HURD in the same manner.
I don't speak for anyone but myself, but I reject HURD because it has turned into something of a joke. I reject it for the same reason I rejected Duke Nukem Forever...very little with that long a development cycle and that many technical problems and promises unkept are worth the time and trouble they've taken.
Were this a paid proprietary system, I would never give them the time of day, nor would I recommend them to anyone, until they've proven themselves abundantly.
Fortunately, this is a free project. I will laugh and sneer along with everyone else, and presume it is not worth the time of day, based on experience with other vapor ware that later released (none as epicly vaportastic as this, mind you...). When (or, as I feel is necessary to add, If) the HURD gets released, I will probably assume it is worthless on arrival...but I will still download and try it out, just like I do on occasion with Fedora, because I feel it is important to give these projects a chance, at least occasionally.
Looking through the list of comments on this post, though, I see a lot of people who have honest, non-trollish things to say about why they feel the HURD is in trouble, and where they think they failed. Granted, there are plenty of people just making jokes at HURDs expense (I admit...I laughed; you have to, sometimes even if it is at yourself).
I believe the old saying is "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water". There are a lot of irrelevant comments in here...people come here sometimes to blow off steam, or make some jokes. There are also a lot of very relevant commentary, if you are willing to dig a little.
Instead of criticizing and making fun of projects which are new or different
No offense, but HURD is anything but new. Different, maybe; however, it being "in development" now for over 20 years makes it hard to even claim different. If it would just release, already, THEN we could maybe criticize it for being different!
In all seriousness, though, you are going to get people, in any community, opposed to something just because it is different. Sometimes this is a bad thing, but sometimes it means that a different idea has to show why it is valuable to break from working tradition before people will accept it. Personally, I'm all for trying something different, and I agree, I think it is a shame so many reject change so readily and completely.
Anyway, my point was, Slashdot is not irrelevant; don't take everything you read on it seriously, obviously, but don't dismiss everything here either.
RTFA is Known to the State of California to cause cancer.
Spoken like a true asshole. So if /. is irrelevant, why the fuck are you reading it/posting on it, dipshit? Guess you're irrelevant too. It's all well and good that Hurd is sooooooo much better than Linux... (and you know this, how, exactly?) and it only took, what, 20 years? That reminds me of how when Windows XP came out someone suggested I (as part of everyone) should get it as soon as possible because it's stable, safe and secure. I said back, "suppose it might just be. Lovely. Misro$oft is to be congratulated. After ripping the world off of literally billions (possibly over a trillion really) of dollars, destroying an entire industry segment, forming a juggernaut monopoly so powerful that the limb-dicked US government, the same organization that jailed Al Capone, split up Ma Bell and Standard Oil, couldn't touch them... after all these years, and all that money, they F I N A L L Y made something that fucking works? Wow."
I scoff at the "HURD" first because I think recursive acronyms are fucking stupid, and people who use them should be slapped, hard, right in the face, and also because it has been like, what, forever? So now they're finally maybe eventually going to release something, requiring people who want to use it to learn a whole new system just to use the same fucking tools? Sure, why the fuck not?
I read the about page, and it sounded like the reasons for its' existence were ideological (a GNU kernel is the last missing piece in a pure GNU OS), and possibly something to do with SMP, but it wasn't entirely clear if that was where they were going in the GNU Hurd "about us" page.
Not trolling, but can someone state the elevator pitch for GNU Hurd?
So what exactly are the advantages of a micro-kernel when compared with a modern modularized kernel?