Hi, On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 10:17:10AM +0200, Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:
> Currently I know the Hurd as a nice and working concept, but I'd like > it to spread, and for this it needs a niche. Very true. > Is there already a niche where the Hurd is the best of all systems? Well, in potential, surely -- but in practice, I can't think of any... :-( > For that I'd like to organize a small brainstorm - just write down > some usages where the Hurd could be or already is the best of all > systems. I do have some ideas for the "could" part, obviously -- or I wouldn't be here :-) I'm not sure how to break them up into specific niches, though... One important use is for very technical people, who don't always go with standard solutions, but rather use new approaches to best solve their problems, and will often find traditional kernels too limiting. There is also the whole area I called "advanced lightweight virtualization" (see http://tri-ceps.blogspot.com/2007/10/advanced-lightweight-virtualization.html ), i.e. the ability to create various kinds of interesting subenvironments. Many use cases are covered by much bigger fish; but the flexibility we offer here could still be interesting: I think the middle grounds we cover between directly running applications, and full isolation through containers or VMs, are quite unique. This could simplify management of demanding applications for example, by partially isolating them from other applications and the main system, and thus reducing incompatibilities. Creating lightweight software appliances sounds like an interesting option. Another interesting aspect is application development: With the easily customized/extended system functionality, and the ability to contain such customizations in subenvironments, I believe that Hurd offers a good platform for much more efficient development of complex applications. Application developers can just introduce the desired mechanisms on a very low level, instead of building around existing abstractions. The extensible filesystem in particular seems extremely helpful as a powerful, intuitive and transparent communication mechanism, which allows creating truly modular applications. While I believe this can be applied to any kind of applications, I'm personally most interested in more efficient and powerful desktop environments -- these considerations are in fact what got me seriously interested in the Hurd. Even more specifically, I've done most considerations (though by far not all) on modular web browsing environments. Those interested can read up some of my thoughts on this: http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_name=20080909073154.GB821%40alien.local (Just skip the text mode browsing stuff -- the relevant part is the long monologue at the end... I really should put these ideas into my blog.) > The reason behind this is to have the Hurd be used in real life > applications, so that it can slowly gain a holding. > > A basic way for doing so is to first select a "pond" which is small > enough that there are no bigger "fishes". Then to occupy that pond, > and as soon as it is "conquered" move to the next slightly bigger > pond. > > This may sound like warfare, but it is simply strategic working: > Having a niche as base gives the required momentum to move on. Indeed. I actually have hoped to use this desktop stuff I described above as the initial pond. I only fear that I'm not able to pull it off myself... > Please keep it at brainstorm mode for a week (till next Tuesday): No > criticizing of other peoples ideas, but instead just gathering ideas. What about criticizing my own ideas?... ;-) -antrik-