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GNU Hurd Begins Supporting Sound, Still Working On 64-bit & USB Support (phoronix.com)
An anonymous reader writes: GNU developer Samuel Thibault presented at this weekend's FOSDEM conference about the current state of GNU Hurd. He shared that over the past year they've started working on experimental sound support as their big new feature. They also have x86 64-bit support to the point that the kernel can boot, but not much beyond that stage yet. USB and other functionality remains a work-in-progress. Those curious about this GNU kernel project can find more details via the presentation media.
The microkernel architecture makes it quite cool.
These days Open/Free software is more important than ever. With closed kernels and binary blobs you have no idea what kind of code is running on your system. It would be nice to have a true Open kernel running on true Open hardware.
VMs are a poor man's a workaround of missing microkernel features. Do you mount all your filesystems just via a VM? And if you do then all the user programs have to run inside that VM. And so restarting the VM is as painful as restarting the whole machine. What's the point of such VM then?
This.. more user mode. Less privlidged mode.
I look forward to the day we can dump the 2MLOC behemoth of crap the Linux kernel is.
In a way Hurd is not free software because it does not allow me to freely unleash all potential of my PC. I am restricted with digital handcuffs.
What's the point of continuing with Hurd?
For the same reason anyone does something they enjoy for fun and recreation, namely so we don't become hollow and joyless, reserved to asking on forums why other people do things they enjoy :P
I note you both read slashdot and posted to slashdot today, as well as aren't out working to do something "useful".
Don't you think it a tad off to spend your free time doing things you enjoy at the same time as questioning other people doing the same?
You already have one. It's called Minix 3. It can be used today and even has full sound support and USB support since many years ago. The Hurd is just a one-man wankfest at this point.
I really am not interested in using a kernel whose primary claim to fame is "we crash a lot, but when we do you don't need to reboot to recover!". Seems to me that's kind of missing the point. Why did your driver crash to start with? Try coding things better so that unexpected states do not cause the system to lock or crash and you will not need to worry about it. It's kind of like they're trying to sell canoes made out of cardboard, but throwing in unlimited duct tape at no extra charge.
FOSS is not a garden party or cake sale where anyone can volunteer just like that. Features that seem relatively simple to the end user can hide tens or hundreds of thousands of lines of code behind them.
Odd. Linux has sound, full 64-bit support, is free (as in both speech and beer), and I didn't have to write any of it.
I'm having trouble seeing HURD as being superior to that.
HURD can become a non-crashing OS one day, Linux with its current architecture cannot. Everything has its pros and cons, pick your poison.
There is an implicit false dichotomy there, namely "ancient design monolithic kernel" and "ancient-style microkernel". There are many other choices.
Actually, since NTFS under Linux runs in user space, yes you can. In fact, for many kernel services (USB, file systems, networking, etc.), the kernel can call upon separate servers to handle those services. And that's another problem with microkernels: their design focuses not on what users need and the question of how to best provide that, but rather on a mechanism.