

Signs of life from GNU Hurd - sciurus
https://lwn.net/Articles/452296/

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onan_barbarian
Grits teeth...

It's _still_ pointless. There's no chance of displacing Linux or the BSDs in
practical terms, and there's no particularly interesting ideas in it. We
already know you can build a Unix on top of a microkernel and it will sorta
work.

Enough, already. Kill this late-1980s design and build something interesting
already. Surely at least one of the things that have happened between
1990-2011 in hardware, software and networking warrants a rethink of OS
assumptions rather than this stale rehashing?

~~~
glassx
_there's no particularly interesting ideas in it_

I sorta agree.

I particularly would like to see operating systems implemented using JIT
compilation and software isolation. Managed code running safely on the ring0
of the processor.

Microsoft Singularity started this but I'd like to see the open source people
trying something like that! I really think we need processor/architecture
independency if we really want to achieve freedom.

~~~
prodigal_erik
Sadly, neither JNode (Java) nor House (Haskell) look very active. I keep
thinking I should start something though I'm sure there are hundreds of
embryonic kernels out there already.

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beej71
Arch Linux^H^H^H^H^H has had a Hurd variant for some time.

<http://www.archhurd.org/>

I installed it on VirtualBox. Smelled like Unix.

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pnathan
Interesting! If they can really get it ticking this time, it would be really
interesting to see how a microkernel plays out in 'popular' use.

It's sort of funny how the major kernels are primarily monolithic (please
correct me if I'm wrong wrt recent versions of Windows), but academic research
says microkernels are better. Worse is better? First-mover advantage?

~~~
macrael
Does OS X (and iOS, I suppose) being built on Mach not count?

~~~
glhaynes
The BSD-style kernel "subsystem" of XNU, Darwin's kernel, is statically linked
with Mach and executes in privileged mode. So, while it "has" Mach and some
parts of the kernel interact with other parts via Mach port interfaces, XNU
isn't really a microkernel as classically defined anymore since it provides
all the facilities you'd expect of a non-micro kernel.

~~~
kls
It's been a while since I have kept up with the kernel space but I remember
when I last was interested in it, that there was a trend toward hybridization.
That Linux was adopting some micro like architectures as well as windows. OSX
probably could be considered a hybrid from the start.

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glhaynes
Would've been awesome in 1980 on a timesharing system. Now I've got as much
control of all my personal devices as I want and I don't _want_ any more
control of devices at work than what I need to do my job (with control comes
responsibility).

~~~
Someone
You still run stuff at home? :-)

I think we would see different comments if the HURD were performing reasonably
and AWS ran it.

Having said that, the speed at which the project moves does not help its
cause.

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fununclebob
Something relevant: Symbian has had a microkernel architecture for most of
it's life: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian>

For a brief shining moment, it was open source. It's legacy is very
interesting, worth a read to see just how far the little OS that could has
come along since it first ran on PDAs. In fact, it's atypical architecture
gives Symbian some advantages over contemporary OSes in terms of absurdly low
power and CPU requirements. It is also quite secure, offering granular
security settings for almost anything - the only Symbian malware that ever
made the news were those that the user installed him/herself. Sadly this also
gives it a very complex programming model (for example, it uses an obscure
variant of C; also many basic services like audio need to be accessed through
a server running on device) and a difficult threading model. Qt provides a
beautiful API that wraps over the native layer these days, but it seems it's
simply not fashionable among the majority of developers.

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leif
GNU Emacs and GNU Screen do not compile. What?

~~~
lelf
Emacs worked for me. But that was long time ago, in “by hand”-cross-compiled
system, not any Debian.

(BTW, cross-compiling the entire system is _tons_ of fun — for cross-gcc you
want libc, but to compile libc you need cross-gcc)

~~~
leif
That sounds about as fun as rock climbing with your teeth.

Also, our usernames are alarmingly similar in this font.

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russellallen
These articles always compare Hurd to Linux. I'd love to see a comparison with
Minix3 or Genode/L4 instead.

~~~
bane
It's probably because RMS always compares (indirectly) Hurd and Linux.

~~~
kls
RMS has never really liked the fact that Linux was not under direct GNU
control. I am sure the rift is greater after the rejection of GPL 3 by the
Linux camp. RMS has a vision for how things should be and tries to align the
GNU offerings to that vision. Some agree with it, some kind of agree with it,
and some think he is a fruitcake. Understanding his vision puts the push for
Hurd into perspective. He cannot achieve it with Linux because Linux is
steered by stewards that don't exactly line up with his world view.

~~~
9999
I rather like the fact that there is one branch of kernel dev that favors
practicality, expediency, and commercial viability in their worldview and
another that favors a strident free software philosophy. The world is a better
place for having people working on both paths.

~~~
kls
I agree, I think there is a place in the world for each philosophical world
view. I personally don't like absolutism with the exception of possibly the
ones found in pure science.

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epsilondelta
Hurd is still using Mach? I don't see the point if it's just going to cheat
around the IPC problem like OS X did.

And in the past decade, there have been more promising microkernels, like L4.
Unless I missed something and there's still a good reason for Hurd to still be
using Mach.

~~~
ch0wn
There were attempts to use L4 and several other micro kernels like Coyotos and
Viengoos, but as far as I know all of them stalled and the Mach variant has
been the only one to be continued to present day.

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hollerith
This time for sure :)

