Sam Couter wrote:

>The Hurd is just a kernel (well, a microkernel and a bunch of servers
>that offer services normally provided by more traditional kernels).
>GNOME runs on the Hurd and it's about the same as GNOME on Linux or
>FreeBSD or any one of a bunch of free operating systems. I don't know if
>KDE runs on the Hurd yet, but when it does, it'll be just like running
>KDE on Linux or FreeBSD or any one of a bunch of free operating systems.

QuantumG <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> See, this is flat out wrong.

No, what I said is correct. The kernel is largely irrelevant to the
end-user experience.

> We've know since BeOS that a microkernel 
> makes for a better desktop operating system.

Who's "we"?

I'm no kernel expert, so what I say here is probably worth exactly what
you paid for it, but...

While I happen to agree with you that a microkernel seems like the best
(most secure, stable, flexible and extensible) possible architecture for
a system to have (barring deadbrained hardware architectures like x86),
whether you're on a microkernel or monolithic system makes very little
difference to the end-user experience. GNOME and KDE still look and
behave like GNOME and KDE whether you're on Linux, one of the BSDs or
the Hurd.

> That is not to say that we should just throw Linux away.  In fact, I 
> advocate the opposite.  We need to refocus work on the Linux kernel and 
> step up the incremental migration of services out of the kernel.  

Some crazy loon whacked the Linux kernel and ORBit (a C library that
implements the CORBA specs) together a few years ago. The extrapolation
of such trends leads to drivers in user space on a physically seperate
machine, anywhere on the planet, with any hardware architecture, and
implemented in any language that has CORBA support. Now that is
something I find interesting, if not immediately useful.
-- 
Sam "Eddie" Couter  |  mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Debian Developer    |  mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
                    |  jabber:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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