Hi,
On Fri, Mar 31, 2000 at 09:01:17PM -0800, Gerald Gutierrez wrote:
> But I am interested in the HURD. It strikes me as the Right Way to build
> software. As a technically-minded individual I would be pleased if it
> would grow to maturation and be usable. But for what purpose would I use
> it?
How could we know? Everyone has different needs and problems to solve, and
if you are happy with Linux, BSD, BeOS or evn (yick!) Windows, the Hurd will
probably look clumsy and overly complicated to you.
> There is already Linux and *BSD. Why compete with and
> offer to replace something that is already free and that works
> well?
We don't compete.
> I would rather have it serve a purpose for which there is no
> current, free replacement.
Well, this is more like a question that is worth answering. However, the
unique thing that the Hurd offers is the potential in its design. The Hurd
is the only truly usable multiserver OS on a microkernel, and all advantages
are inherited from this simple fact. The Hurd has the potential to offer
significant advantages in distributed systems and SMP systems (although both
are not supported out of the box). There are other advantages, like
arbitrary extensibility through users, and debugging essential severs in
sub-hurds.
> >From my perspective, it would be really, really cool if HURD grew up to be
> a media OS,
The main objective of a "media OS" is real time processing.
The Hurd has nothing to do with it, as scheduling is entirely done in the
microkernel (there are systems where the policy for scheduling is outside
the kernel, though). So support of real time tasks has to be done in the
kernel.
> HURD is still in its early stages.
Even if it was true (it isn't), the Hurd is not the place to implement the
features you would like to see.
> This is an opportunity to shed a lot of
> cruft that current open source OS' have gathered, while building something
> that is new and that could be highly desirable and needed in the
> not-so-distant future. I think it is an achievable and rewarding goal.
>
> What do you HURD developers and users think?
I think that you should write a real time microkernel that can run the Hurd
:)
Thanks,
Marcus
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