Slashdot Mirror
GNU Hurd 0.5, GNU Mach 1.4, GNU MIG 1.4 Released
jrepin writes "Which day could be better suited for publishing a set of Hurd package releases than the GNU project's 30th birthday? These new releases bundle bug fixes and enhancements done since the last releases more than a decade ago; really too many (both years and improvements) to list them individually, The GNU Hurd is the GNU project's replacement for the Unix kernel. It is a collection of servers that run on the Mach microkernel to implement file systems, network protocols, file access control, and other features that are implemented by the Unix kernel or similar kernels (such as Linux)."
30 years for Hurd 0.5, so 1.0 will be available in 2043?
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
"Development of the Hurd has proceeded slowly." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd)
As per http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd/status.html: " It may not be ready for production use, as there are still some bugs and missing features".
Exactly how long has it been like this ? I tracked this project for about a decade until I concluded it would never be ready for production - over a decade ago.
Fork a BSD variant, license it under the GPL, package it with GNU stuff, call it Hurd 1.0.
What exactly is relevant about Hurd now? The OS landscape has changed and people have moved on. This is really a non-story, aside from the humor value.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...of a kernel that doesn't actually work. Except on Stallman's PC.
Stallman does not possess such devices he runs and developed emacs on a unix VM inside his brain! After realizing that all unix passwords and attempts to hide source code in a binary were useless. The concept of a conceptual computer without passwords and accessed only by obscure command macros written in C exploded from his mind and POOF we had emacs. This was then enhanced by interpreting the commands in binary form but it only worked for those who spoke with a lisp. Then all this went out the Windows when a stiff DOSe of source code was obscured by means of non standard compilers and suddenly word and data processing binaries could easily be obfuscated by hiding the source.
Others tried to change this situation by judiciously applying rubber to source code and the resulting LateXT could be stretched into a usable FLEXable shape, at least until a Bison shat on the source. Stallman HURD about this change in how binaries were now being used and created and GNU for certain that he would have to come out of his brain and actually become the Kernel in charge of parsing things at the source. Because he still insists upon compiling source only in his brain before creating binaries the resulting OS kernel has been extremely slow to take shape because debugging it has given him nightmares whenever he actually sleeps in fact the that the sleep command causes instant dreams that bring him back to the Bill Gates rants he witnessed at computer club meetings in the 1970's.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
I'm looking forward to the Alpha port, though I'm also hearing good things about Itanium.
What does GNU Hurd have that Minix 3 does not? They are both microkernels except Minix 3 looks more mature.
GNU Hurd uses a sane license. Minix 3 uses a BSD license, which is unfree.
That's hilarious. (I don't mean just the bit where, like so many FSF fanboys, but not RMS, you can't grasp the difference between "Free" and "Copyleft"; I mean the argument as a whole.)
So HURD's only benefit (that you can think of) is that if some evil company wants to take a microkernel-based UNIX-like, make their changes, and distribute the result without source... they'll be forced to go with Minix 3 (the one that GP says "looks more mature", which you don't seem to dispute) instead of HURD (which you can't or won't explain any technical benefit of)? Yeah, I think they'll just go with Minix 3, same as they would no matter how you licensed HURD.
things tend to go slow. Real slow. If you want things now, now, now, pay the man/men. It is free, as in someone-else-will-do-it, so you get what you, that's right, didn't pay for.
Fortunately, eventually people found this hobby project worth paying for, although I think it proved its worth before the big money started pouring in.
There are, of course, some other hobby projects that also manage to support a little more hardware than the Hurd does without huge amounts of money poured into them.
Does anyone know why this project is stalling so much?
Cuz it's run by a Stall-man?
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
Perl 6 makes progress. It's slow, but it's fairly steady. There has never been a one-year gap in packages, let alone ten years. One of the compilers, Rakudo, is nearly feature complete and then just needs to be optimized. It has monthly releases.