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GNU Hurd To Develop SATA, USB, Audio Support
An anonymous reader writes "Hurd, the GNU micro-kernel project that was founded by Richard Stallman in 1983, may finally be catching up with Linux on the desktop... Plans were shared by its developers to finally bring in some modern functionality by working on support for Serial ATA drives, USB support, and sound cards. There are also ambitions to provide x86-64 CPU architecture support. GNU Hurd developers will be doing an unofficial Debian GNU/Hurd 'Wheezy' release this year but they hope for the Debian 'Jessie' release their micro-kernel in Debian will make it as part of some official CDs."
Why does anything always have to do with practicality or use. Tinkering with new or old operating systems can be compared with learning and messing with new or old math or physics. I guess that when developing some USB drivers for hurd, you learn more than improving a given drivers for linux. The later is like reading and understanding and improving on a paper which is "well known", the former like breaking new grounds.
Isn't one of the "benefits that go with modularity" supposed to be that it's easier to write new kinds of modules (say, to support new hardware)?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
You'd be surprised how often Stallman's name appears in a Man page for something REALLY useful in Linux. The only reason you don't hear about more recent projects from him is because a lot of the stuff he's written follows the UNIX ideology of giving people a lot of really small tools that can be combined in unique and useful ways.
Granted none of the stuff his name appears on works outside of the terminal, but 50% of my day in Linux is spent in a terminal because I do embedded development. The guy's tools just work, which is great.
Not directly, but many of them contain bindings for running in GUI frameworks. gdb is a good example.
Speaking of which, why is HURD being developed on a closed platform like the x86? Yeah, the x86 spec is fully published and all that, but it's Intel's IP, while x64 is AMD's. It's not like any company that feels like it can just pick up the databook and build an x86 compatible CPU - they would be running afoul of Intel's patents. And isn't GNU about 'protecting our freedoms', and shouldn't anyone w/ the money and resources be able to just take any databook and build a CPU compatible w/ the rest?
So instead of creating one more OS for the already crowded market, why doesn't HURD use OpenRISC as the basis for its design? The hardware design for OpenRISC 1200 was released under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), while the models and firmware were released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). So this sounds just perfect for building a complete libre system. Please don't tell me that the problem is w/ Verilog itself not being a GPLed software. Maybe the GNU guys can write something like GVerilog so that hardware simulations will be Libre.
The other option - develop it on the Lemote computers that use the Loongson CPU, which RMS finds satisfactorily 'free'. Then further development of HURD can be done by the Chinese, maybe even the People's Liberation Army of Programmers (PLAP) and endorsed by the Beijing regime, and will be the official OS of all Chinese. HURD will then become the #1 OS in the world