On Mon, Aug 03, 1998 at 06:50:45PM +1000, David Maslen wrote: > Hi Everyone. > I currently run a few debian linux systems. I enjoy the flexability, > configurability and freedom of the licensing. I'm not a programer, but > I can compile and install linux ported software. I don't believe unix > is the 'best' OS, but I don't know what else might be. > > So what could installing Debian/Hurd do for me?
If you are happy with your Linux box, by all means stay with it! The Hurd is currently under development, only core pieces work already, there are a lot of things missing and some things are not fully functional. A lot of Linux softare will not compile yet because linux syscalls are not implemented. All GNU tools and even XFree86 ran on it, but not without patching. > And if it's all a bit early, what will it do for me? When it is ready, there are advantages and disadvantages. The main difference is that the Hurd is a microkernel, and will support several "personalities", one of them Linux binary compatibility. But I'm not fully aware of the technical aspects of a microkernel architecture, so you will find better information elsewhere. > I'm pretty happy with my SMP linux box running XFree86 and Window > maker. Could I do this with HURD? Are there any/many applications that > can be compiled on HURD? Mozilla, xemacs? The gnu-0.2 binary package contains emacs, perl and many other binaries. But XFree86 would require some tweaking, I think. However, it is not the time to worry about this. There are more important things to do for the Hurd. Note also that Debian GNU/Hurd is not installable yet. For example, we still have problems with dpkg (so your question is sort of academic until we have at least the base system ported). Thank you for your interest, Marcus -- "Rhubarb is no Egyptian god." Debian GNU/Linux finger brinkmd@ Marcus Brinkmann http://www.debian.org master.debian.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] for public PGP Key http://homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Marcus.Brinkmann/ PGP Key ID 36E7CD09 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
