
How to contribute to GNU Hurd (2006) - pmoriarty
https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/contributing.html
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jiqiren
Every time I checkout GNU Hurd I'm flabbergasted that it is still 32bit. It is
something that is really hard to get past and honestly I don't have the skills
to contribute to make it 64bit. But I just don't have time for something that
is limited to 4GB address space[1]. Too far away from modern to be honest.

(IMHO)

[1]
[https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/faq/64-bit.html](https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/faq/64-bit.html)

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Arnt
So if you were to use the hurd, you'd have to run n two-gigabyte shards
instead of n/4 eight-gigabyte shards. This is not a big deal. The hurd has
debilitating problem, this isn't one of them.

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jjirsa
So there’s the “how”, where’s the “why”?

Why Hurd and not Linux? Or one of the BSDs? Or any of the thousands of OSS
projects actually useful to real people in 2017?

~~~
rekado
Fine grain virtualisation is pretty hackish in Linux, but it's part of the
design of the Hurd.

On the Hurd you can trivially virtualise the filesystem (on Linux you need
FUSE for that but it doesn't go far enough), there are user namespaces by
default (on Linux they are a hack and that makes local privilege escalation
bugs really bad), drivers run in userspace, so different users can have
different views on the hardware, etc.

All of this is quite relevant _today_ , especially on shared systems such as
HPC clusters.

The Hurd is the only multi-server micro-kernel system with a Unix persona
(other micro-kernel systems are either single-server systems or don't bother
with a Unix-like persona). I find it a lot more elegant than Linux, which
needs to move more and more things into privileged kernel space.

With the NetBSD rumpkernel the Hurd can reuse NetBSD device drivers in
userspace.

There are a lot of things to like about the Hurd. If only it had more
contributors! It's a great project that provides practical software freedom
(like other high profile GNU packages), thereby liberating users from the root
user.

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Santosh83
Rather than trying to go mainstream or catch up to Linux, they could instead
serve as a testing ground for experimental OS algorithms.

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fooker
They are notoriously hostile to first time contributors, don't hold your
breath.

~~~
yorwba
From which decade is your experience?

This document explicitly states that they encourage new contributions, there
is a list of "easy" issues to work on, and they apparently participate in
Google Summer of Code.

Of course reality might look different, but I'm willing to give them the
benefit of the doubt that they mean what they write.

------
iaabtpbtpnn
(2016)

~~~
acheron
Given this is about the Hurd, there's a non-zero chance it could have been
(1996), so I'm fine with a 2016 article...

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davidgerard
Nobody would even remember Hurd if it wasn't a GNU project. TempleOS has more
organic interest than Hurd. Urbit has more organic interest than Hurd.

