Thanks for your kind suggestions. I will check out the "Contributing" list.
In my professional life I am mostly involved with numerical analysis (mostly FORTRAN codes), programming (FORTRAN and Python), scientific publications in LaTeX, and "casual scripting", mostly Bash and Python. In my career I have also coded extensively in Perl and Visual Basic. I would say that about 90% of my experience is on Linux systems (when I was a PhD student, I also did some batch scripting on VMS, on a VMS cluster that was subsequently replaced by a linux cluster). In other words, I am familiar with computer programming but not the world's best programmer by any means. For GNU/HURD I will take a look at things like BLAS and LAPACK, those are definitely needed for things like NumPy, SciPy and SymPy. In my opinion, for a desktop OS to be "acceptable", it must support at least: - USB - BlueTooth - sound - WiFi And there must be at least web browser. I don't know how the situation is with GNU/HURD . Question: which packages are top priority for porting to GNU/HURD? I have some experience adapting scientific software to various flavours of linux, perhaps I can be useful in that area? I will investigate a bit further with the links in the "Contributing" page and I will contact you all later. Thanks, Shinichi On Sat, Jan 31, 2026 at 7:34 PM João Pedro Malhado <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello Shinichi, > > On Fri, Jan 30, 2026 at 08:28:03PM +0900, Wilfred van Rooijen wrote: > > Thank you for your invitation to help development on the HURD. I would > like > > to try, but there are few things that are holding me back: > > > > - I have quite a strong background in programming for numerical analysis, > > things like finite element method and (large) systems of differential > > equations. I consider myself fluent in FORTRAN, LaTeX and Python but I > have > > little to no experience with C > > Sounds like we have a similar background :) > > > - I can definitely bring myself up to a level where I can bring a > positive > > contribution to GNU/HURD, but the question is how much time I'd have to > > invest, in other words, I expect it would take a (very) long time before > I > > could become really productive > > > > - I am also reluctant because of the experimental nature of this > software. > > I am not sure I want to spend my time on something that will never reach > > the level of actual application. I have spent 17 years of my life as a > > professor working on things that are mostly irrelevant and useless, and > now > > I want to spend my time on things that are actually useful. > > I can understand your reservations. Ultimately it is your evaluation to > make. > The number of developers is small, so there is some chance that individual > contributions are significant. But it does take time to learn and be > productive. > > > If I were to "join the team", what kind of work are we talking about? Is > it > > feasible to write a complete USB driver, or something with sound? > > It is a free software project, so you get to choose what you want to work > on ;) > > I think developing a USB stack would be very useful (I believe the idea > would be > to adapt work from NetBSD), but probably on the higher tier of difficulty. > > The following page lists a number of well defined projects useful in the > short > term: > https://darnassus.sceen.net/~hurd-web/contributing/ > > There are things to be done within Debian as well (this is a Debian > mailing-list after all), there is work to be done on porting different > software > to work in the Hurd. Perhaps porting different scientific software in > Debian to > the Hurd would be a good way to learn. The FORTRAN compiler should work, I > don't > know if there are particular challenges in porting FORTRAN software to the > Hurd. > > Other people in the list may have other suggestions. > > Regards, > João >
