

GNU Hurd in Google Summer of Code 2011 - tjr
http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/community/gsoc.html

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onan_barbarian
These projects violate the spirit and traditions of GNU Hurd, by not including
a 'rewrite the system to change the underlying microkernel to something else'
project.

We are way overdue for one of these changes. Who will step up to add to the
long list (Mach / L4 / Coyotos / Viegoos / back to Mach) of Hurd would-be
microkernels?

Bonus points for multiple competing projects in that space...

~~~
wmf
In honor of Frans Kaashoek, I suggest porting Hurd to XOmB.
<http://wiki.xomb.org/index.php?title=Main_Page>

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iwwr
HURD is 11 years older than Duke Nukem Forever, if that puts things in
perspective. Is it the oldest (ongoing) major software project that has yet to
ship?

~~~
IvarTJ
The hypertext project Xanadu, founded in 1960.

~~~
wmf
I'm pretty sure Xanadu was finally canceled.

~~~
cosgroveb
I think it's still going? <http://www.xanadu.com/>

Also released in 2007, Xanadu space: <http://xanarama.net/>

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darrylring
2011 is the year of the Hurd desktop.

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amock
I used to think that microkernels would eventually become the architecture of
choice for desktops and it's nice to see that Hurd is still making progress in
that direction. It seems like such an obvious reliability improvement to move
as much as possible to user space and as hardware progresses we should be able
to make the performance good enough.

~~~
snippyhollow
Mac OS X is using a Mach microkernel.

~~~
wmf
Not really. AFAIK, NeXTSTEP/OS X is based on Mach 2.x which wasn't really a
microkernel (the BSD code wasn't moved to userspace until 3.0).

~~~
glhaynes
XNU (the Mac OS X / Darwin kernel) is based on Mach 3.0 but still has BSD in
the kernel:

 _Early versions of Mach had monolithic kernels, with much of BSD's code in
the kernel. Mach 3.0 was the first microkernel implementation.

XNU's Mach component is based on Mach 3.0, although it's not used as a
microkernel. The BSD subsystem is part of the kernel and so are various other
subsystems that are typically implemented as user-space servers in microkernel
systems._

from
[http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/ancient/whatismacosx/arch_xnu....](http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/ancient/whatismacosx/arch_xnu.html)

~~~
i386
There was a research project at ERTOS to port XNU to L4 microkernel.
Interestingly, this guy now works at Apple on the kernel team.

<http://ertos.nicta.com.au/software/darbat/>

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handrake
It's one of my dreams to see it ship and I use it as my primary OS.

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tzs
I don't understand how Hurd has taken so long. The GNU project managed to get
gcc out, and compilers are harder than kernels. At least, that's how it seems
to me as a former Unix kernel hacker. I've had occasion to replace the stock
process and memory handling with new implementations of my own from scratch,
so I've been pretty deep into the system, and so don't think I've missed some
hidden vein of difficulty.

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ajslater
<http://i.imgur.com/ulaQV.jpg>

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pgbovine
interesting ... i don't know about stallman's involvement in Hurd, but iirc
he's been pretty critical of all major software companies, even ones like
Google that are friendly to the open-source community. i wonder how he feels
about Hurd participating in Summer of Code.

~~~
tjr
Project GNU has participated in the Google Summer of Code in several past
years; here's a little more info:

<http://www.gnu.org/software/soc-projects/guidelines.html>

