Are you trying to illustrate your words by acting as if you were yourself really "superior" ?
I heard about hurd long time ago and it was already a long time project. I heard it will soon be released so many time that I can't count them. I even actually spoke with people working on it (about ten years ago) that were assuring me that the project was on the run for a stable release.
Ten years later, I'm acting as supervisor for student writing their own kernels every year: in 4 years of activities I have seen about 7 kernel projects reaching an "interesting state", and those kernel were all "experimental" in their own way: micro-kernel, coded in some specific language (D, OCaml... ), fully modularized, coded for exotic architectures... All are single-man project done by students.
Booting and reaching the state were drivers and userland are the next checkpoint is not so hard, even when you deal with "new inner architecture". But keeping a project really active so that you reach a stable state, is much harder, and it seems that hurd fails on that matter.
Hurd might have been "new" twenty years ago, but for now, it is just another not-working micro-kernel.
(oh, mind your respect, should I talk about GNUstep ?)
Each time somone talk about moving from C to some others languages, we heard about C++, C# or Java. All are kind of OOL, but whatabout typed functionnal programming languages ?
I'm using OCaml every day, for many things (in the CDuce interpreter, see www.CDuce.org, but also in other coding projects.) And it is fast (nearly as C, just take a look at this language benchmark), it is in some way safe (the famous : "Well typed programs cannot go wrong"), it has a good interaction mechanism with C librairies, programs can be compiled in native or in bytecode, OCaml native code compiler is giving very good result on many arch/OS...
And, speaking about gnome, there's also a "wrapper" for GTK and GTK2 (called lablgtk and lablgtk2.)
Yes, you rigth saying that desktop is not "home use", but:
"home use" is include in desktop
"End-users" have the habits of having the same OS @work and @home, even if in the context of a professionnal desktop use, a unix system can seems appropriate, it need a home version to fits this need of "homogeneity". If you have had to administrate windows and unix desktopes on a network with users not attached to a specific office, you know the rigth choice, but why it isn't the common choice ? it's not only due to a heavy commercial politic, there are more concerns, and that's why we need an open-source home OS in order to have an open-source desktop OS.
The question "is Linux ready for the desktop" isn't the rigth one. Since the vision of a desktop computer in open source community (and generaly for nerds and geek, even if they don't use an open source OS) isn't what I can call a desktop computer for a real "end user".
Most of user that I meet are only using their computer for one or two monolitic applications or for game. They don't need a complete multi-user OS like a Unix system. Even if linux (or *BSD) now comes with smart and usable GUIs, the main usability problem is the complex users/administrator separation.
I think a good step to a real open source desktop OS is to integrate an open source kernel into a simplified userland base where the main administrative taskes are hidden (in fact we need an "open MacOS X").
Whithout this simplification, no "end-users" will ever be interested in an OS. In fact, this needs seems interessant to me, since it reflect the fact that general OS, as general purpose languages, may not be a realistic goal.
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Are you trying to illustrate your words by acting as if you were yourself really "superior" ?
I heard about hurd long time ago and it was already a long time project. I heard it will soon be released so many time that I can't count them. I even actually spoke with people working on it (about ten years ago) that were assuring me that the project was on the run for a stable release.
Ten years later, I'm acting as supervisor for student writing their own kernels every year: in 4 years of activities I have seen about 7 kernel projects reaching an "interesting state", and those kernel were all "experimental" in their own way: micro-kernel, coded in some specific language (D, OCaml ... ), fully modularized, coded for exotic architectures ... All are single-man project done by students.
Booting and reaching the state were drivers and userland are the next checkpoint is not so hard, even when you deal with "new inner architecture". But keeping a project really active so that you reach a stable state, is much harder, and it seems that hurd fails on that matter.
Hurd might have been "new" twenty years ago, but for now, it is just another not-working micro-kernel.
(oh, mind your respect, should I talk about GNUstep ?)
Each time somone talk about moving from C to some others languages, we heard about C++, C# or Java. All are kind of OOL, but whatabout typed functionnal programming languages ?
I'm using OCaml every day, for many things (in the CDuce interpreter, see www.CDuce.org, but also in other coding projects.) And it is fast (nearly as C, just take a look at this language benchmark), it is in some way safe (the famous : "Well typed programs cannot go wrong"), it has a good interaction mechanism with C librairies, programs can be compiled in native or in bytecode, OCaml native code compiler is giving very good result on many arch/OS ...
And, speaking about gnome, there's also a "wrapper" for GTK and GTK2 (called lablgtk and lablgtk2.)
Yes, you rigth saying that desktop is not "home use", but :
The question "is Linux ready for the desktop" isn't the rigth one. Since the vision of a desktop computer in open source community (and generaly for nerds and geek, even if they don't use an open source OS) isn't what I can call a desktop computer for a real "end user".
Most of user that I meet are only using their computer for one or two monolitic applications or for game. They don't need a complete multi-user OS like a Unix system. Even if linux (or *BSD) now comes with smart and usable GUIs, the main usability problem is the complex users/administrator separation.
I think a good step to a real open source desktop OS is to integrate an open source kernel into a simplified userland base where the main administrative taskes are hidden (in fact we need an "open MacOS X").
Whithout this simplification, no "end-users" will ever be interested in an OS. In fact, this needs seems interessant to me, since it reflect the fact that general OS, as general purpose languages, may not be a realistic goal.
Yes, following those steps, I stop using linux 4 years ago, and never come back.
I'm afraid I've got another one for you : linux is already died...