51–60 of 132 posts
Having been quite interested in GNU/Hurd a long time ago (the years have become decades, I fear) and having lost track of the project, I wonder whether somebody can comment on where GNU/Hurd is being used nowadays.
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1508/
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> The debate is sort of obsolete really. Microkernels are not obsolete (see seL4), but HURD unfortunately is. > Linux has microkernel-like functionalities like FUSE. You can do filesystems in userspace now. FUSE is far cray (capability, security and performance-wise) from real microkernels. Linux is a monolithic kernel and unashamedly so. > The modern approach to High Availability is to have redundant hardware. A sin…
> Microkernels are not obsolete (see seL4), but HURD unfortunately is. Why HURD specifically? But I didn't mean microkernels, but the debate. Basically my view is that nothing stays pure. If microkernels have significant upsides a monolithic kernel like Linux doesn't have, then the logical outcome is that Linux copies the required feature like eg, FUSE. Yeah, it's not a true microkernel, but who cares? It can do the…
Because Hurd is (in my understanding) exactly the solution in search of a problem you're talking about. It's microkernel for the sake of being microkernel, but tied to the past (POSIX/UNIX model).
Actually innovative microkernels can do things Linux or other mainstream monolithic OS can't just copy (and that's why they're interesting).
Again using L4 as an example, have a look at discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35842240 (but there are also other interesting designs, eg QNX)
Nobody forces you to switch to a differnent OS, but that doesn't mean it's pointless to research and build different systems.
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Most people are generally more interested in functioning software running on existing hardware. Focusing on that might actually make Hurd actually relevant at some point in the future.
RISC-V SBCs are on the market in abundance and they are affordable.
The CPU is boring -- x86 instruction encoding is a bit ugly, but it works. It's all the stuff hanging off them that make the difference, and as far as I'm aware, risc-v hasn't done anything interesting here. It hasn't even enhanced discoverability (eg, by hanging internal peripherals off a virtual PCI bus).
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> IIRC there was a lot of FUD simply because it came from Microsoft. It was annoying because we already had odt as open format and OOXML was reported to be more of a text dump of what Microsoft did in binary than a standard meant for interoperability. > But I can read them on my Linux machine and you don't need a byte of non-free software for it, and I had a lot more trouble with the .doc files they published 20 year…
> text dump of what Microsoft did in binary than a standard meant for interoperability. Isn't it all XML based? > OpenOffice was already better at reading old doc files than Microsoft Word was well before OOXML was a thing. It's been a long time, but that was certainly not my experience from what I recall; I had a lot of trouble with this. And writing files and then expecting Word users to be able to read them well w…
That doesn't help much when the XML format consists of elements like "footnoteLayoutLikeWW8" which "specifies that applications shall emulate the behavior of a previously existing word processing application (Microsoft Word 6.x/95/97)" [1]. I think this kind of thing is what the parent comment was referring to.
[1] https://www.consortiuminfo.org/opendocument-and-ooxml/the-co...
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HURD is does not have a stable release. It's unlikely to even boot on real hardware, which is why they have QEMU images. I don't know what screenshots of a kernel would look like. Generalising this to GNU and the FSF is daft. Claiming this somehow shows their irrelevance is even more so.
I disagree - this isn't some isolated example, this pattern is seen across many other GUN, FSF and other free as in freedom projects.
A lot of free as in freedom projects are completely out of touch with the modern world and waste their (already thin) resources on irrelevant, half-baked projects furthering some ideology rather than practical projects that would bring freedom (even if incomplete) to more people.
Software (or hardware) should be considered a means to an end, with freedom being a bonus. But for a lot of free as in freedom projects, the "freedom" is the key with the actual utility of the artifact being an afterthought (as a result it doesn't catch on, because nobody cares how free the thing is if it's useless or unusable in practice).
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The debate is sort of obsolete really. * Linux has microkernel-like functionalities like FUSE. You can do filesystems in userspace now. * The modern approach to High Availability is to have redundant hardware. A single machine being fault tolerant isn't that important anymore. * Hardware became far more complex. A modern video card or anything else is its own computer, with a very uncomfortable amount of state and ac…
> > The modern approach to High Availability is to have redundant hardware. A single machine being fault tolerant isn't that important anymore. You're making a lot of assumptions with regards to the operating environment. What about a probe being sent to Mars, the Moon or wherever? In fact let's just generalize to space-faring craft. That environment demands incredible resiliency and the ability to continue running e…
Having been quite interested in GNU/Hurd a long time ago (the years have become decades, I fear) and having lost track of the project, I wonder whether somebody can comment on where GNU/Hurd is being used nowadays.
Hurd should be able to load linux-libre drivers in the userland for a compatibility boost.
If you only knew how bad things really are. That's, probably, not possible.
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> really shows how irrelevant the GNU foundation (and even the FSF) have become I've seen several posts here in the last month about proprietary software being used to basically exploit the users: steeply increase fees, hold files ransom (upgrade for money or loose access to files), spying on users. My conclusion is very different from yours: GNU Foundation and FSF are very relevant! They seem to lack in the PR dept,…
We have Linux though, and mountains of non-GNU projects. It's not really about "proprietary vs. free software", it whether the FSF and GNU are still a driving force for Free Software. And to me this seems ... not really? They're still trying to create their anno-1985 Unix replacement. That's great and all, but also not really driving anything forward.
I see copy-left as a form of hacker activism, and this getting less. I'm quite sure it's not a good thing. FLOSS has been commencialized.
I prefer AGPL for the simple reason big corps avoid it like the plague.
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If you only knew how bad things really are. That's, probably, not possible.
I assume that would require such an insane amount of "framework" around it as to be practically impossible, not literally impossible?