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GNU Hurd Begins Supporting Sound, Still Working On 64-bit & USB Support (phoronix.com)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the pretty-soon-big-and-fancy-like-gnu dept.

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.

41 of 312 comments (clear)

  1. In future news by c++ · · Score: 4, Funny

    We're proud to announce that GNU Hurd can now save and load files.

    1. Re:In future news by jfdavis668 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/1508/

  2. What's the point by mwvdlee · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What's the point of continuing with Hurd?
    I mean, apart from making make laugh whenever they have "news".

    --
    Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
    1. Re:What's the point by HouseOfMisterE · · Score: 2

      Hurd probably does make make laugh!

    2. Re:What's the point by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This is an interesting question. It's one thing if the HURD was making progress but based on this kind of news it would seem that technology is actually being developed faster than the kernel.

    3. Re:What's the point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The microkernel architecture makes it quite cool.

    4. Re:What's the point by ArchieBunker · · Score: 2

      Its like trying to talk someone out of a cult they are following.

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    5. Re:What's the point by short · · Score: 5, Informative

      Thanks to the microkernel architecture you will no longer have to reboot system just to get rid of that stale lock on an accidentally removed USB disk or unmountable --bind mount in /proc/mounts due to non-existing user/usecount or due to some crashed driver locking up your PCI device etc. I could transparently restart crashed ntfs.sys emulated under Linux in 2003 while Linux kernel still can't do that with its native filesystems.

    6. Re:What's the point by Lisandro · · Score: 2

      What's the point of continuing with Hurd?

      A long time ago you could've asked the same question about Linux. Just because it is not useful right now (or might never be...) doesn't mean it is not worth working on.

      I'd much love to have a production-ready, open source microkernel OS to toy with.

    7. Re: What's the point by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 2

      "news"

      Properly called "gnus".

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    8. Re:What's the point by short · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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?

    9. Re:What's the point by dissy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

    10. Re:What's the point by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 2

      Ok. So by which century will Hurd be usable enough that I can take advantage of the features? And don't say "now" because not having sound support or full workinf x86_64 support does not make a usable kernel.

    11. Re:What's the point by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

    12. Re:What's the point by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    13. Re:What's the point by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 2

      What's the point of such VM then?

      How about it works, and does all the things I need, while microkernels don't. "Poor man's a workaround" beats "missing" any day of the week.

    14. Re:What's the point by rochrist · · Score: 2

      The difference is, Linux became useful in a couple of years. Hurd has been in development since fucking 1983! 32 freaking years.

    15. Re:What's the point by Nemyst · · Score: 2

      The sooner you will write that the sooner you will get it. That's all what Free software guarantees you and I find it superior to anything else.

      So because it fulfills a need that's not actually there, never.

    16. Re:What's the point by segin · · Score: 2

      Yes, you can most certainly mount ext4 under Minix, just use ext4fuse since Minix 3 now supports FUSE.

      Hell, Minix 3 already sports some binary compatibility with NetBSD...

    17. Re:What's the point by dissy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Today I worked on an addon for a popular open source javascript-based code editor, added some minor features to one of my open source projects and added a bunch of much needed unittests to another of my open source projects.

      I also took a few minutes to read some Slashdot posts and make a few comments.

      Amazingly, both can be done in a single day!

      Indeed! Just as the Hurd team can play on Hurd and contribute to other more useful projects :}

      And I apologize for the accusation as well, it's just that the vast majority of people who question others free time activities have a high likelihood of both demanding productivity from others while not living to the same standard themselves.

      I suppose it was mostly the fact I quite literally formed the thought "I wonder which of the top three posts will ask 'what is the point?'" as I clicked the article to open the comments, and there this was right at the top in spot 1 with that exact phrase and already modded up to max.

      But I am pleasantly surprised for you shattering that expectation.

    18. Re: What's the point by Guy+Harris · · Score: 2

      If you want a microkernel architecture, then why not OS X or at least Darwin?

      Because neither Darwin nor OS X have a microkernel architecture.

    19. Re: What's the point by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

      You mean Mach. That's the microkernel underlying both OSX and Hurd. OSX basically sticks one massive process on top of that for unix services. Hurd actually goes the full microkernel style. It's a research system which means unlike OSX its hardware support is poor but it can do interesting things from an OS perspective.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    20. Re:What's the point by EmeraldBot · · Score: 2

      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.

      Because you inevitably will experience that driver crash, and the reason can often be quite difficult to find, especially in today's environments. Trying to issue a bug fix for every little problem is like playing whack-a-mole, and all these bug fixes start to conflict with each other at some point, and then eventually somenody throws the whole hairball out in its entirety and makes a new one. The real programmer's way of solving this is to simply make the problems impossible to begin with, and while micro kernels can't quite eliminate every possible problem with crashing drivers, they can mitigate whole kernel panics into mildly inconvenient pauses. And that is very powerful indeed...

      To be clear, microkernels do have some disadvantages, but for mission critical and embedded devices, they would be a fantastic option. Unfortunatly, while it has proven itself very well with an excellent track record, QNX is the only true microkernel system out there, and it's not open source (or free, for that matter).

      --
      "Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
    21. Re:What's the point by ooloorie · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Thanks to the microkernel architecture you will no longer have to reboot system just to get rid of that stale lock on an accidentally removed USB disk or unmountable

      There is an implicit false dichotomy there, namely "ancient design monolithic kernel" and "ancient-style microkernel". There are many other choices.

      I could transparently restart crashed ntfs.sys emulated under Linux in 2003 while Linux kernel still can't do that with its native filesystems.

      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.

    22. Re:What's the point by exomondo · · Score: 2

      What's the point of continuing with Hurd?

      Well the FSF doesn't really have an operating system kernel representative of the Free Software ideology. The closest thing is the Linux kernel which Linus has clearly said simply uses the GPLv2 for tit-for-tat contributions because it is a good license, not because Linux is a free software project. Of course it also doesn't do copyright assignment to the FSF and also is not GPLv3 and is unlikely to migrate to further revisions of the GPL in future.

      As the FSF evolves the Linux kernel's position on free software does not evolve with them so to evangelize free software the FSF really needs an operating system representative of their ideals, that is what GNU Hurd is.

    23. Re: What's the point by kenh · · Score: 2

      Make no mistake, Microsoft executives hold regular meetings where the agenda is: 1) How to make more money, 2) How to drive customers away from Linux.

      Make no mistake, Microsoft executives hold regular meetings where the agenda is: 1) How to make more money, 2) How to drive customers towards Microsoft products.

      FTFY

      Linux is not an industry juggernaut threatening to overtake Microsoft market share... Just curious, has Linux share of the desktop market exceeded the current (2016) market share of Microsoft Vista?

      --
      Ken
    24. Re:What's the point by batkiwi · · Score: 2

      Adding to your comments, you won't have this issue in HURD due to the lack of USB removable device support, so that stale lock wouldn't exist to begin with.

    25. Re: What's the point by unixisc · · Score: 2

      OS X does use Mach, but not in the way that any microkernel platform would. As for HURD, did they finally conclude which microkernel they wanted to use? They tried out a few, and then it's unclear which one they settled for. While Mach 3.x was a first generation microkernel, there have been a lot of developments in microkernel theory that are not there in Mach 3. In fact, a major downside of Mach 3 is that it is resource intensive, and that reputation has spread to microkernels in general, even though it's not true about other microkernels like QNX or Minix.

    26. Re:What's the point by unixisc · · Score: 2

      While this is true, RMS had abandoned HURD a long time ago, and instead took Linux, stripped it of any 'non-free' components, branded it 'libre-Linux' and promotes THAT. There are a few distros that the FSF does endorse - like Trisquel, gNewSense, and a few others that seem primarily localized for Latin America.

      If I'm not mistaken, they wasted a lot of time in determining an ideal microkernel. What I don't get is why they didn't just fork Minix, which was there, put their fork under GPL3, and then make THAT the basis of their efforts? They could have combined it w/ systemd and emacs, and gotten their ultimate GNU system.

    27. Re:What's the point by KGIII · · Score: 2

      Oddly, I have that tab open right this very minute. It has been open for days - I keep downloading a distro every once in a while and trying them in a VM.

      It's odd to see it brought up but not entirely unknown.

      http://www.gnu.org/distros/fre...

      That's the "official" link - as far as I know. All of those should be free software by FSF beliefs. Every bit of code in them should have source available. There should be zero closed binaries or the likes. So far? Meh... I've found some interesting ideas with great potential.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  3. Re:What a pointless waste of time. by jones_supa · · Score: 2

    True. Even Linux is already having a lot of problems with keeping up with functionality.

  4. Open software by 110010001000 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Open software by short · · Score: 2

      You can run Linux-libre for the OS part, that is much easier target than GNU Hurd.

    2. Re:Open software by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 2

      Couldn't be bothered to read my entire sentence? Unless domain experts are constantly auditing he code it means very little that Joe Average can browse the code.

  5. Many kinds of freedom by jones_supa · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Many kinds of freedom by KGIII · · Score: 2

      Well, to continue with your car analogy... You'd probably be placing the blame emphasis on the wrong parties.

      If those things didn't work - can you fix them?
      If those things didn't work - why was that?
      Was it because of improper documentation?
      Was it because they had proprietary lock-out?
      Was it because they were prevented access due to legal mechanisms?
      Was it just because the OS sucked?

      I mean, there are lots of reasons that such behavior could be happening. It may not be entirely the fault of the OS authors. I'd also suggest that there's a whole lot of blame for the installer of that OS (you, in this case). You should have read the documentation and seen that those features were not yet supported. You shouldn't have installed the OS if you weren't willing to accept those faults/limitations. You also should have made backups! ;-)

      But, the big question is - why weren't those things supported? Nothing in the GPL would mean those couldn't be supported. At least, I can't think of any reason that the license of the free software would prevent those things from working. If they're not working, it's probably due to something other than the license. At the very least, you might want to read the documentation *before* installing.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  6. Re:It's important for a tech ecosystem by ledow · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I agree.

    But they have to be usable.

    Technically, FreeDOS had USB before GNU Hurd.

    And 64-bit.

    And that had to emulate a Microsoft piece of software not that much older than itself too, to the point that all DOS programs (even things like BIOS Flashing utilities) still work.

    GNU Hurd is just a dead-end. An intellectual project of little practical use. It's like pushing for MINIX or similar. Yes, alternative OS are all good. But only if they are vaguely in the same decades as the machines you can buy today.

  7. Re:Experimental audio support by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 4, Funny

    Does that include Sound Blaster for IBM's MicroChannel Architecture?

    No, currently it only supports setting the bit that puts a positive pulse on the PC speaker. Work is in progress on support for resetting that bit, so in the meantime it's a maximum of one click sound per session.

    The cool part, though, is that with the microkernel architecture, this is all managed via userspace code!

  8. 1995 all over by Barbarian · · Score: 4, Funny

    I do recall, in the early days of slashdot that the GNU/Hurd enthusiasts were proclaiming how silly people were to be wasting time on Linux, when Hurd was just around the corner. I was in high school then. It's great to hear that audio works, maybe one of my grandchildren one day will be able to actually use it for video.

  9. Just an observation... by roc97007 · · Score: 2

    Scanning through the discussion, it looks like conversations relating to HURD get ugly fast. Obviously there are strong feelings at work here.

    I view the whole thing somewhat with nostalgia, as I was babysitting Vaxen running BSD when I first heard of HURD. Regardless of its merits or lack of same, it seems to be on track for the world's record for slowest development of any currently developed OS. Kinda the Duke Nukem Forever of operating systems.

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
  10. Re:Hurd is the kernel component of GNU Emacs by unixisc · · Score: 2

    Can't they rewrite systemd in lisp, put it under emacs and then have their entire OS? Speaking of which, why are they bothering w/ 64-bit support at all? Since the only app that would run in HURD would be emacs, they might as well just make emacs the front end of the OS, instead of bothering about bash/csh/ksh/ et al