On Sun, 21 Dec 2003, Oded Arbel wrote:
> ???????? ?¨???©???? 21 ???¦?????¨ 2003, 14:52, ? ???×?? ?¢?? ?????? Shlomi Fish:
> > since Mandrake 7.2 I never had to re-compile the kernel, except
> > UML kernels for kernel development
>
> HURD offers something very interesting in this areana: you won't need UML with
> HURD because each user can run her own drivers/filesystems/etc or even a full
> kernel on a running system w/o affecting other users.
>
Yes, so I've heard.
> > Is the situation considerably better in x86-based BSD systems?
>
> Not AFAIK. marginly better I mightsay.
>
Hmmm... so it's not as much a problem of Linux as it is the problem of the
wacky i386 architecture. And since Linux has to run there, I guess the
users or developers have to deal with it as well. Plus, I remember a great
deal of hardware and device drivers problems I encountered in Windows as
well.
If you don't like it buy a nice PowerMac/UltraSparc/Iris/Alpha/whatever
and run Linux there.
> > And what are you referring by "shortcomings of the kernel"? What is wrong
> > with the kernel, exactly?
>
> There are tons of problems, one that comes to mind now (because I just ran
> into it today) is that if a process is blocked on IO, inside the kernel,
> nothing you can do in user space can free it. you can't interrupt it or even
> kill -9 it. if you can't fix the problem at the root, you might as well
> reboot.
>
Well, that can be resolved with some amount of revamping (at least I
think so). No need to throw away all the good work that has been done on
Linux so far.
The question of course is whether resolving all these problems in Linux
will take more time than adding all the missing functionality to the Hurd.
And I believe this is not true.
> > > Unfortunatly as other people have mentioned - the HURD is seriously
> > > lacking in developers, especially driver writers. Linux is to blame for
> > > most of that.
> >
> > KImageShop is seriously lacking in developers, and the GIMP is to blame
> > for most of that. Can you blame people for wanting to contribute to a
> > fully functional, full-fledged working system that to something that does
> > not work yet, and has not for countless years?
>
> No. never meant to say anything bad about the people working on Linux, but you
> have to agree that if Linux had not existed, HURD would have had many more
> developers, may be even to the point that it would have been usable about
> now.
>
And in the meantime everyone would have used a BSD clone... ;-) I sure as
hell don't regret that Linus Torvalds started Linux even if it meant less
developers being involved in the Hurd. One bird in the hand is better than
two in the bush. People have been working on the Hurd for several good
years before Linux started. A great deal of people have continued to work
on it during the time Linux has matured and widely deployed. And yet a
working product have been failed to be produced.
I'm not a great believer in the concentration of effort/"let's have just
one alternative" belief. The existence of KDE does not necessarily makes
GNOME progress any slower. (and vice versa). And so, I'm not sure the rise
of Linux has slowed down the Hurd considerably. Like people here said,
maybe it can even contribute some drivers code for them to use.
And we must always remember Brooks' Law: "the more developers a project
has, there are more interactions between the developers, and so its
initial progress is slower". According to ESR's "The Cathedral and the
Bazaar", the Bazaar model overrides this tendency, but I'm not sure if
completely or if the development of the Hurd is fully Bazaar like, or ever
can be.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
> BTW - as Debian GNU/Hurd have been mentioned here, here are the installation
> instruction if anybody wants to try it out.
> http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install
>
That is a useful link. Thanks!
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Home Page: http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Writing a BitKeeper replacement is probably easier at this point than getting
its license changed.
Matt Mackall on OFTC.net #offtopic.
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