
Debian GNU/Hurd 2019 Released - jrepinc
https://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2019/07/msg00001.html
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robotbikes
I think that it is exciting that people are still working on Hurd and there is
a new release synced with Buster. I think there is latent potential in
microkernels and that we may actually be at in position to exploit some of the
benefits such as heightened security and stability. While at the same time the
performance cost of context switching could be reduced due to the higher
number of cores on modern chips (especially compared to the hardware available
in the 90s). One of the biggest adoption challenge any new operating presents
is hardware compatibility and well a reason to try it. 80% software
compatibility with Debian is a big accomplishment, so this is probably worth
spinning up a virtual machine to play around with.

~~~
harry8
Well I've been hearing about those benefits for at least 20 years. None yet
actually sighted in the wild. Any attempted explanations from the microkernel
religious zealots has been thoroughly unconvincing (because mach is slow,
so?). Maybe you're right, I'd _love_ to see it if you are. But while prior
performance is no guarantee of the future, as they say in the funds management
adverts, a pattern of repeated failure is something maybe not to completely
ignore. Is there a reason for it that is being overlooked or glossed over. (In
mutual funds it was and is M.E.R.) Stallman talks about hurd being really hard
to debug, is that a thing? Or is there some kind of combinational explosion
using multiple servers a message passing that isn't there with a monothlithic
kernel? Something else entirely?

Anyway I'll go back to the american monolithic kernel conspiracy to destroy OS
research and keep the Europeans out and ask the brothers if they can think of
anything. (That's a joke, right? Yet I've heard it said in the absence of
irony...)

~~~
robotbikes
Well Intel chose minix to run their often despised management engine, so their
engineers saw some benefit there to the microkernel architecture. Google is
putting at least nomimal developer resources into Fuschia. And the L4
microkernel and derivatives displayed that microkernels aren't doomed to be
slow.

I think that Linux is probably going to be the dominant free software kernel
for quite some time especially since it has finally gotten to the point of at
least receiving nominal driver support by hardware manufacturers. So Hurd will
be a curiosity for now but considering its history it is still very cool that
development continues. Whether it will become useful in ways that Linux is not
remains to be seen.

~~~
zitterbewegung
The L4 microkernel is currently being used by Apple in the secure enclave.

See [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209632](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT209632)

~~~
harry8
Looks interesting. My former colleagues worked on porting osx to l4 more than
a decade ago.

That still doesn't look like a microkernel based, multi server os to me and
does not claim to exhibit those of touted advantages. This reminds me more of
dresdens live demo cd from about 2006. Great stuff, but more of a
virtualisation layer than an os.

I'd like to see it stand up.

~~~
anyfoo
Just out of curiosity, are you saying you don’t think the OS running on the
Secure Enclave processor (which is separate from the main OS) looks like a
multi server microkernel, or are you still referring to the osx on L4
Experiment you mentioned?

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jasonvorhe
I'm curious, but why are people still spending time and resources on Hurd?

Is it curiosity or is there some use case for Hurd that I'm not aware of?

Thanks.

~~~
knocte
You don't know the fundamental difference between Hurd and Linux, do you?

~~~
Ylodi
Hurd is like Mazda Wankel engine. :-)

~~~
sverige
Except Mazda actually sold millions of cars that ran down the road with the
Wankel engine.

~~~
m463
The wankel was actually like Hurd at one point, everybody thought it would be
the next big thing and many car manufacturers had wankel engines. Mazda stuck
it out and funded it into production.

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Thev00d00
> Debian GNU/Hurd is currently available for the i386 architecture with about
> 80% of the Debian archive, and more to come!

Does Hurd still not support amd64?!

~~~
lol768
From
[https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/faq/64-bit.html](https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/faq/64-bit.html)

> There are currently no plan for 64-bit userland, but there are plans for
> 64-bit kernelland with 32-bit userland, which will notably permit to
> efficiently make use of more than 2 GiB memory and provide 4 GiB userland
> addressing space. Work on this is currently in the master-x86_64 and port-
> amd64 branches for GNU Mach.

> That being said, you can always run a 32-bit version on a 64-bit machine, it
> just works, processes are just limited to a couple GiB available memory.

~~~
StudentStuff
Debian x32 has a pretty similar concept wrt more efficient memory usage:
[https://wiki.debian.org/X32Port](https://wiki.debian.org/X32Port)

~~~
chrisseaton
You can also store pointers for more than 4 GB in a 32 bit address by
compressing them.

~~~
comradesmith
But you are still using 32 bit registers so your load and save instructions
can't really make use of compressed addresses

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jbverschoor
Oh wow, I didn't realize hurd was still alive, and even 80% of the packages
are working! Impressive

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TallGuyShort
Does the Hurd team go around lecturing people who call it "Hurd" about how
it's actually "GNU"/Hurd, how Hurd is the kernel and that's only one part, or
is that only when the kernel wasn't their idea?

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153791098c
Hurd is a GNU project so it doesn't even really need a second mention, it only
needs that mention because there is a competing kernel (Linux) that is used
with the system. Otherwise it's just known as the GNU system. The kernel is
pretty irrelevant for most users, we don't call it Android/Linux or Windows/NT
for a reason. A kernel is not an operating system. Calling the whole OS Linux
is both inaccurate and does not introduce anyone to the whole reason why the
GNU project was started, which is having the freedom to really own and control
your computer. Linus Torvalds doesn't give a shit about that and is happy with
chromebooks as long as they use his kernel. Freedom is irrelevant to him and
most of the "open-source" community. That should be reason enough to not call
the entire system Linux.

~~~
farisjarrah
You're argument holds water, but the problem is when we start getting into
OS's that actually don't ship any of the GNU userland. The classic example is
Alpine Linux. Do we call that BusyBox/Linux? WSL 1 was a super weird anti-
example where Microsoft skipped out on the Linux and shipped GNU stuff and
still called it Linux. I think the colloquial naming convention became
something like Kleenex or Google where we default to blowing our nose with
(generic usage, not brand usage) "kleenex" with off-brand tissues or had our
parents (generic usage, not brand usage) "google" something on Bing (as thats
the default search engine of Windows).

~~~
gsam
Depends on what you mean by Linux. The ABI Microsoft were attempting to
emulate was absolutely Linux. (This API business is exactly the issue with
Oracle vs Google over Java).

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joelthelion
How well does it work? Can you run Gnome, for instance?

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blodovnik
What does Hurd uniquely solve?

~~~
Fnoord
Which microkernel based OSes are ccurrently deployed? Which of these are open
source?

~~~
pjmlp
Symbian (you can still buy handsets), QNX, L4, INTEGRITY OS, GenodeOS, muen,
Fuchsia.

Then you have the hybrid ones from Apple, Android with Treble (classical Linux
drivers are referring to as legacy driver on the documentation) and Windows is
kind of hybrid as well.

As of Catalina, Apple was very clear that the long term roadmap for their OSes
is to move all drivers and kernel extensions into userspace, which will be a
gradual process.

~~~
solarkraft
That is fascinating. So is everyone moving to be more microkernel-y? It's
anyone actually transitioning to a more monolithic system?

~~~
zzzcpan
It's a natural evolution of any system - monoliths are ok only as long as you
don't need much of reliability, security, productivity, cooperation, etc.

~~~
tomxor
> monoliths are ok only as long as you don't need much of reliability,
> security, productivity, cooperation, etc

As a supporter of microkernels I feel this is more a list of side effects. I'd
put it this way: monoliths are ok so long as any critical code stays very
small and comprehensible in it's entirety by an individual. It's also
respectful of things that are not microkernels.

Good microkernels designs operate on the same principle, to achieve
reliability and security they keep their critical code very small. It's not
invulnerable to bugs, but it is well understood that minimising this surface
area is the first step in minimising bugs, the secondary effect is also
focusing attention due to minimising total lines of critical code.
Microkernels are an attempt to take this to an absolute minimum by adding a
layer of abstraction that makes otherwise critical code non-critical.

As a mere enthusiast I feel like this is the most useful lesson to take away
from microkernels in other software, not triple redundancy or fancy
reincarnation servers, but the fact that scale breeds complexity breeds bugs.
Making sure the critical parts remain lean and inspectable helps a great deal
in all software even when the separation is not as strict.

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poelzi
Maybe if Hurd decide to rewrite their kernel in rust I would give a s@#!, but
since it's still a none usable kernel after decades of debugging and
development, maybe it's ripe for /dev/null ?

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amaccuish
Can someone with more knowledge answer, is it possible to have one core in
kernel mode and another core in user mode? If yes, is it quicker to message
between cores or to context switch?

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snvzz
Still stuck using Mach (1st gen microkernel).

Design failures highlighted in the Hurd critique paper still not addressed.

I'd look elsewhere, such as Genode with seL4, or Minix3.

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equalunique
I own a 32-bit machine specifically for trying out GNU/Hurd, just for fun.
Glad to have an excuse for dusting it off once again.

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xmichael999
I've been reading about hurd for so long, today is the day I try it in
Virtualbox! Cool stuff, good work people!

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_448
..and the Symbian guys will be thinking where did they go wrong? :)

