GNU Hurd 0.7 and GNU Mach 1.6 Released

jones_supa writes: Halloween brought us GNU Hurd 0.7, GNU Mach 1.6, and GNU MIG 1.6. The new Hurd comes with filesystem driver improvements, provides a new rpcscan utility, and the Hurd code has been ported to work with newer versions of GCC and GNU C Library. The Mach microkernel has updates for compiler compatibility, improvements to the lock debugging infrastructure, the kernel now lets non-privileged users write to a small amount of memory, timestamps are now kept relative to boot time, and there are various bugfixes. MIG 1.6 is a small update which improves compatibility with newer dialects of C programming language. Specific details on all of the updates can be found in the full release announcement. jrepin adds some more details: The GNU Hurd 0.7 improves the node cache for the EXT2 file-system code (ext2fs), improves the native fakeroot tool, provides a new rpcscan utility, and fixes a long-standing synchronization issue with the file-system translators and other components. The GNU Mach 1.6 microkernel also has updates for compiler compatibility, improvements to the lock debugging infrastructure, the kernel now lets non-privileged users write to a small amount of memory, timestamps are now kept relative to boot time, and there are various bug-fixes.

Comments

Hurd.. why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a troll here.. really.. I followed Hurd in the beginning when i was really interested in the guts of OSs ( even wrote a couple toy ones ), but lost interest when it was moving at sub-snail pace.

Other than pure research, why is the project still going at all? Is there a practical value to the rest of us? Couldn't the efforts be focused somewhere that has a tangible benefit ?

Re:Hurd.. why?

[EmeraldBot]

Probably for much the same reasons that things like Haiku, OpenIndiana, DragonflyBSD, and etc., exist. Who are you to question what is interesting to someone? I don't mean that in a rude way, but honestly, something doesn't have to have millions of users to be someone's pet project or interesting to a small niche audience. After all, how do you think Linux got started? This might come as a shock, but the World does not revolve around you!

But that's the thing. If you look on the homepage, it states it's a complete replacement for Linux as a kernel - but it fails miserably at that. Its application compatibility is extremely low, driver support is absolutly abysmal, and you can't even install it on its own - it depends on the very thing it's supposed to replace!

It's such a shame too, because I think there's a big potential for a microkernel system nowadays. It'd be more secure than a mono kernel, much more reliable, much easier to extend, and the only cost is the overhead involved. I don't knock it for being a hobby project - but then GNU should stop pretending like it has some Linux killer on its hands and that it's an official and supported project, because it's become very clear over the last 30+ years (!) that no one wants to work on it. Imagine what it could be if it got some real support, though....