[Wolves] HURD

sparkes sparkes at westmids.biz
Sun Feb 6 09:41:15 GMT 2005


baza wrote:
> I See on Slash Dot that the GNU kernel project, HURD, now runs some
> software. Thing is; where is the market for this when it hits the
> streets? Is it not ten years late, with GNU/Linux having won the game
> about three years ago?
>

hurd runs quite well.  The is the rewritten kernels that should run like
stink (for micro kernels) in a couple of years.  These are real cutting
edge and are what was planned for HURD when it started in 90.  On modern
hardware the microkernel approach is a winner, memory access and io is
so fast a microkernel can do posix interprocess communications as fast
as linux did just a couple of years ago.

Theres always room for one more at the table.  Linux (because it does
what you expect), BSD (cos it does what it says on the tin) and HURD
(because its the future baby, or more likely for future daddy of a more
pragmatic teams baby).  The fact is as long as these kernels follow the
standards they will run userland software developed for each other with
little noticable difference.  The current way to bootstrap a HURD system
is, start with a Debian GNU/Linux system... ;-)

I believe over the next ten years we will slowly move away from linux
and onto another free kernel.  Debian already has Debian GNU/Linux,
Debian GNU/Hurd and Debian GNU/FreeBSD with others in planning.  One of
the benefits of Debian getting it's naming right from the begining (and
I'm lothed to say this Debian Legal are right again) is the fact the
distribution can use different kernels without fubaring it's marketing
(not that it really has marketing, no this isn't a cue to start another
rant people)

The linux kernel has already fragmented with real time stuff etc with no
noticable harm and plenty of noticable good things can only get better
as more kernels enter the market with freesoftware licences and
developers have a larger pool of code and users to pick from.

Whatever the kernel hacking wizards do as long as it's free we will all
benefit sooner or later (see the bsd code in almost every operating
system, the hurd and linux mixup in both kernels and the fact almost
every new operating system uses the gnu multiboot standard and headers
developed for HURD)

> Baza

sparkes - has a HURD chroot for booting in bochs
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/wolves/attachments/20050206/399e9f0c/signature-0001.bin


More information about the Wolves mailing list