Dr. Dobbs' Journal On Hurd Posted by Hemos on Wednesday November 01, @08:23AM from the getting-some-attention-at-least dept. URL: http://slashdot.org/articles/00/11/01/1326225.shtml
wiredog pointed out an article that's currently running in Dr. Dobbs that talks about Hurd, [http://www.ddj.com/articles/2000/0012/0012a/0012a.htm] what it is, and what it is meant to do, as well as what's cool about it. The article starts off slow, but then gets into some good info. Top comments moderator scored 4 or 5 Re: Avoid the Hurd... 'Dr. Dobbs' Journal On Hurd' | Login/Create an Account | 278 comments | Search Discussion Threshold: [4: 6 comments...] [Threaded...][Oldest First.................] ______ _____ The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. Slashdot is not responsible for what they say. **** Avoid the HURD (Score:4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 01, @08:37AM EST (#10) The HURD is an ambitious project which has had a rocky history, but there remains several black marks against it which seem to me to be fundamental flaws which are inherent to what it is and what it wants to do. Firstly there is the fact that it is based upon an implementation of the Mach microkernel, which has been the favourite of OS courses but which has been shown to be rediculously inefficient in real world situations where performance rather than elegence is a major factor. You need to have a fast kernel in any case, and Mach just can't cut it. If the HURD is to succeed it needs to move onto using a more serious architecture rather than some ivory tower toy kernel. Secondly, the current implementation of its server system is prone to an inordinate amount of deadlocks and race conditions under heavy loads, partly due to the Mach kernel, partly due to some sloppy coding in some of the IPC code. This means that whilst the HURD is fine for the casual home user, under heavy loads (such as running a webserver), you are likely to get a lot of system lag or even freezing. Until these serious flaws are sorted out, the HURD is still in the "hobbyist" category rather than the "real world" one. It's nice to study, but it needs to have a lot more work before it's ready for heavy use. [ Reply to This | Parent ] **** Re:Avoid the HURD (Score:4, Interesting) by hey! ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) on Wednesday November 01, @09:52AM EST (#71) (User #33014 Info) Isn't Apple's OS X Server based on Mach 2.5? I haven't heard of any major problems with it. -Matt ---- It's bad luck to be superstitious. [ Reply to This | Parent ] ***** Re:Avoid the HURD (Score:5, Informative) by alangmead on Wednesday November 01, @11:24AM EST (#146) (User #109702 Info) There are two major differences between OS X and the Hurd. The first difference is that OS X is a single server and the Hurd is a multi-server. That is, on OS X all the Mach stuff communicates with is one large Free-BSD kernel with its hardware dependent stuff ripped out. The Hurd on the other hand has each system call handled by a separate thread of execution. The second difference is that Apple moved the BSD kernel into the same kernel space as the Mach microkernel. This means that they don't have the context switching overhead that traditional Mach based systems have. [ Reply to This | Parent ] o 3 replies beneath your current threshold. + 4 replies beneath your current threshold. * 6 replies beneath your current threshold. **** Hurd, how many years in development? (Score:4, Interesting) by DamnYankee ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) on Wednesday November 01, @08:38AM EST (#11) (User #18417 Info) http://www.mi4e.com When I first heard of HURD back in, what, 1992 or 1993, I thought it sounded like a great idea. But now it's the better part of a decade later and the thing still isn't out of ALHPA testing! I'll stick with Linux, thanks... I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said, "I drank what?" (Val Kilmer in the movie Real Genius) [ Reply to This | Parent ] * 5 replies beneath your current threshold. **** Oh spare us the LINUX evangelism (Score:4, Insightful) by MonkeyMagic on Wednesday November 01, @08:59AM EST (#27) (User #118319 Info) Linux demonstrated years ago the Monoliths work. MS showed Microkernels don't. Care to elaborate? Actually there was nothing wrong with the NT microkernel design originally. 3.51 was fast and I believe fairly stable. As far as I can tell the instability came from the UI which has been allowed to contaminate the architecture. Linux has indeed shown that Monolithic kernels can work well, but there are too many who believe that Linux is the peak of OS design and that it can't be beat, so what's the point in even trying?. Well in n number of years, we'll all be talking on kuro5hin about the days when Linux was a really good OS for the hardware of it's day and wasn't slashdot great before IBM bought VA. In other words don't stop looking just because what you've got works. Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. [ Reply to This | Parent ] * 3 replies beneath your current threshold. **** Obviously no understanding of project plans... (Score:4, Insightful) by Christopher B. Brown ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) on Wednesday November 01, @10:10AM EST (#92) (User #1267 Info) http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html At the time that Hurd efforts started... * Mach looked to be the "way of the future." It wasn't until Microsoft pulled Raschid and other critical researchers out of CMU, and IBM's WorkPlaceOS project failed that the "glow" came off. * Linux was still just a "hack" for the 80386. At present, Hurd only runs on IA-32, but that hearkens back to the "immense aura of failure" surrounding Mach. Mach has only seen limited maintenance over the last few year. * As for the "inappropriate ordering," be vastly aware that in order to make a kernel self-hostable, you need to have the whole toolchain including compilers, init , BinUtils, FileUtils, and such. If you have no compiler and no other such tools, you can't build the kernel, you can't run the kernel, you can't use the kernel. No, they got the order straight. The problem isn't with RMS trying to steal the glory from Linus for building a kernel; it's not with Linus stealing the glory from RMS when he built a kernel using the tools RMS helped build. The problem is with the ingrates down the line that don't give credit where it's due. It is fair to say that just about everything at the layer sitting on top of the Linux kernel "comes from GNU." Between GLIBC (whether version 1 or 2), GCC, and BINUTILS, the layers that make Linux useful all do come from FSF efforts. It certainly does look less than graceful when RMS "demands credit;" that doesn't mean it's an outrageous state of affairs for him to think he can expect some credit. And the notion that Hurd is the all important be-all end-all project of the FSF is pretty silly; the people that want to participate are participating, and it is not evident that the FSF is spending big bucks or otherwise big efforts into its development... If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate. [ Reply to This | Parent ] * 2 replies beneath your current threshold. 46 replies beneath your current threshold. ____________________ ______ How many retured bricklayers from FLORIDA are out purchasing PENCIL SHARPENERS right NOW?? All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest � 1997-2000 OSDN. 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