> > b) Is there some compelling purpose that Hurd can serve that Linux > > inherently *cannot?* > > I do not think so. It is just the cleaner design, but that is only of > interest to those who want to hack it.
It is enough for a feature to be so much easier to do on Hurd that no one will bother getting it into Linux. I imagine an Internet hosting service could offer the equivalent of a dedicated server as a sub-Hurd, so the customer can do the things that only root can do on Unix, but several customers could safely share a machine. Can VMWare do that already? (i.e. completely protect the hardware and other VMs from each other) Also, I think the possible uses for filesystem translators are inexhaustible. I'm hoping to write the glue that will allow writing ad hoc translators in Perl with minimal effort.
