
GNU Hurd 0.6 released - agumonkey
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.os.hurd.bugs/27135
======
duncan_bayne
I'm sure there will be a few people chuckling at the news that the Hurd is
still under development.

Yesterday I learned from one of my colleagues that the newer versions of OSX
will only run kernel extensions signed by Apple.

The need for the GNU project is as great now as it was in the 1980s.

~~~
jheriko
i'm chuckling a bit. but then the whole GNU ecosystem is about catering to a
tiny minority with special priorities... inside of an even tinier minority of
users of open source OSes. I'm sure I am just an outsider who doesn't really
understand the needs or the motivations...

Linux does well in the server world, and Apple get a lot of attention, but
even then, between them, they account for something like 4% of OS installs.

I'm also not sure there is much need for GNU. The licenses are absolutely
awful for things that claim to be free... sometimes if something is using LGPL
with exceptions it will see some serious reuse (Qt as an example) but the GPL
license is a great way to stop a project ever reaching its full potential due
to its viral nature.

~~~
wildfire
Wow. Thanks for bringing back visions of the 1990s.

These arguments were tiresome then; they are boring now.

You are conflating GNU, GPL and LGPL.

The GNU system may never be as successful as you think. But portions like The
GNU Compiler Collection (gcc, go, etc.) and GnuPG (GNU Privacy Guard) and
thinks like GNU Emacs are _the_ _standard_ which others are measured against.

Second the "absolutely awful" licenses; being under the GPL has certainly
hindered Linux adoption. And Samba. And ...

The GPL and LGPL are amongst the, if not the, most successful software
licences in history. What's more they are one of the few that has resulted in
_more_ _freedom_.

Things such as Netgear's WRT-54G are classic examples of where these "awful
licences" have changed the world for the better.

~~~
dietrichepp
The GPL in _practice_ hasn't always resulted in more freedom compared to other
licenses. For example, GCC is purposefully designed to be non-modular, to
prevent people from developing proprietary front ends. You may agree or
disagree with the trade-off, but observe the LLVM project: you have the
freedom to manipulate IR outside the compiler. With GCC, you have _permission_
to manipulate IR outside the compiler, but they've gone out of their way to
make it difficult for you, so you might as well give up. LLVM's license makes
the idea of impeding proprietary front ends a non-starter.

~~~
baghira
But that is not a result of the licensing, it is a result of a design
decision. While it may very well be that such a design decision was made to
avoid GCC being used with proprietary front-ends (along with the fact that GCC
is simply an older project), it does not provide an argument against GPL, at
best against some choices made by the FSF. And after all, the LLVM license is
the reason why people have to hope that Apple will open Swift, as opposed to
that being a fait accompli. And the LLVM license is the reason why hardware
vendors will be able to build proprietary back-ends. In my book neither of
these facts increases freedom.

------
Fice
One interesting feature of HURD is userland device drivers:
[https://archive.fosdem.org/2014/schedule/event/07_uk_dde_on_...](https://archive.fosdem.org/2014/schedule/event/07_uk_dde_on_hurd/attachments/slides/373/export/events/attachments/07_uk_dde_on_hurd/slides/373/hurd_dde.pdf)

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Well, it is a microkernel.

~~~
Fice
Yes, and the presentation I linked to shows how this can benefit the end
users.

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FullyFunctional
Hurd was interesting a decade ago, but IMO these days the more interesting
proposals are far more radical, such as the Ethos OS [1].

[1] [https://www.ethos-os.org/](https://www.ethos-os.org/)

~~~
Johnny_Brahms
I am still waiting for an easy to use implementation of MinimalT. It seems
quite cool.

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digitalzombie
Awesome.

Between this, OpenBSD, Haiku/BeOS, Linux and DragonflyBSD are my fav in term
of news and interesting things to read. The dude from DragonflyBSD was over at
Slashdot talking about batchprocess vs msg passing pro, con, when to use it.

~~~
AceJohnny2
You piqued my interest. Was this [1] /. comment all he had to say about it?

[1]
[http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7252569&cid=494676...](http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7252569&cid=49467613)

~~~
digitalzombie
Yeah, that's the one I read. I think that's most of it.

------
ipozgaj
"GNU Hurd runs on 32-bit x86 machines. A version running on 64-bit x86
(x86_64) machines is in progress".

This sounds just like "HURD is almost ready" back in 1990s

------
ggchappell
Do we need some new terminology? There does not seem to be a word for the kind
of thing Hurd is. "Replacement for the Unix kernel" seems a bit wordy. It's a
thing that does what ordinary folk expect a kernel to do. So technically, it's
a kind of _virtual kernel_ , I suppose, but that would be far too easy to
misunderstand.

On a completely different note, just what is it about some software projects
that stretches them out over such huge time scales? Hurd, Perl 6, LaTeX 3,
etc.

~~~
danellis
> So technically, it's a kind of virtual kernel

Technically it's not any kind of kernel. Mach is the kernel, and Hurd is a
collection of servers.

~~~
ggchappell
> Technically it's not any kind of kernel.

Well, I said it's a _virtual kernel_. That's _virtual_ in the sense of "same
interface, different implementation". A _virtual X_ is not an _X_ ; it's just
handled like an _X_. A virtual file is not a file. Virtual memory is not
memory. Virtual reality is not reality. Etc.

Since it is not a kernel, but is supposed to replace one, _virtual kernel_
would seem to be an accurate term. However, it's too easy to misunderstand,
due largely to horribly incorrect usages like "virtual bank" and "virtual
classroom" that have been floating around for a while. Alas!

------
lasermike026
[http://xkcd.com/1508/](http://xkcd.com/1508/)

~~~
JoachimS
Spot on, as always.

------
ocfx
The real question is... is it semver?

~~~
kinghajj
Well technically yes, because of semver 2.0's rule #4: "Anything may change at
any time. The public API should not be considered stable."

~~~
bandrami
Nope. 0.6 cannot be a correct semver number, as it lacks a patch level.

~~~
lmm
I never understood that. Under semver 0.6.0 → 0.7.0 has exactly the same
semantics as 0.6.0 → 0.6.1 (because MAJOR==0). So why insist on the extra
number?

------
acomjean
They don't make this easy:

quote: Also note that you cannot run the Hurd "in isolation": you'll need to
add further components such as the GNU Mach microkernel and the GNU C Library
(glibc), to turn it into a runnable system.

Of course making it easy is a ton of work. If they want to gain some traction
maybe they should work on a version of the OS in Rust. That would be
interesting. glibRust.

~~~
chriswarbo
To be fair, Linux isn't "easy" without a bootloader and an init program to
run. HURD is a little less "easy" since unlike Linux it's not a runnable
kernel, it's a layer on top of the Mach (micro)kernel.

Of course, in practice it's a distro's job to make things easy. There's a
version of Debian running HURD, but I don't know how up-to-date it is:
[https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/](https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/)

