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GNU Hurd News 2026-Q2

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Re: GNU Hurd News 2026-Q2

#71

Post by pessimizer »

stackghost wrote: post #61
oytis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are calling a Linux (sorry, GNU/Linux) killer small silly stuff?

I know this is in jest, but because of the "hurr durr" connotations, only the absolute most bearded of free software zealot neckbeards are going to ever run GNU Hurd beyond simplytest driving it. Open source continues its unbroken streak of showing us why naming things is important.

> but because of the "hurr durr" connotations

I have no idea why you think this. You might be terminally online. Hurd is just like "herd" because it's a microkernel, and hurr durr is some social media/gamer shit a tiny amount of people started saying decades after Hurd started being developed.

Re: GNU Hurd News 2026-Q2

#73

Post by inigyou »

stackghost wrote: post #61
oytis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are calling a Linux (sorry, GNU/Linux) killer small silly stuff?

I know this is in jest, but because of the "hurr durr" connotations, only the absolute most bearded of free software zealot neckbeards are going to ever run GNU Hurd beyond simplytest driving it. Open source continues its unbroken streak of showing us why naming things is important.

GNU Hurd Durd?

Re: GNU Hurd News 2026-Q2

#74

Post by jstimpfle »

darksaints wrote: post #67
csb6 wrote: post #15

Does anyone more familiar with Hurd know how they addressed performance issues encountered by other Mach-based kernels? I remember reading that one of Mach's bottlenecks was validating that each IPC message had proper permissions/access when sending them between processes due to the large number and frequency of messages.

Mach's problem wasn't that it had slow IPC, but rather that in terms of microkernels, Mach was pretty damn big. There are some very fast microkernels out there, like the L4 family, which negate the IPC overhead of microkernels by being small enough to fit entirely in the L2 cache of most processors. Linux may only have the single IPC call per round trip, but it's a fucking huge kernel and there is typically a ton of…

Are you saying there is cache thrashing because callers often sercice rheid own requests themselves? If you don't want to service requests in the same thread, doesnt it mean you have to spend entire core(s) for running the kernel?

Re: GNU Hurd News 2026-Q2

#75

Post by Analemma_ »

doubled112 wrote: post #41
Analemma_ wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it even worse now? The faster computers get, the more that software-induced bottlenecks hurt.

I could see just powering through because modern hardware is fast enough to do so being an option. Adding 20% to a 10 second operation is a lot longer on a wall clock than adding 20% to a 1 second operation.

People lost their shit when Spectre mitigations added 20% overhead to kernel calls though. Why wouldn't they do the same for microkernel overhead?

Re: GNU Hurd News 2026-Q2

#76

Post by shaggie76 »

I can't help but feel disappointed that after 35 years the first thing they're talking about is an SVG logo. I mean, there's a certain novelty that it was made on a laptop running Hurd itself, but still I was left with a sense that progress is meandering and whimsical.

I remember being excited by Hurd's ambitions after studying Tanenbaum's OS book in university and drinking the microkernel kool-aid; now I'm too old and jaded to believe it'll be a viable alternative.

Re: GNU Hurd News 2026-Q2

#77

Post by browningstreet »

shaggie76 wrote: post #76

I can't help but feel disappointed that after 35 years the first thing they're talking about is an SVG logo. I mean, there's a certain novelty that it was made on a laptop running Hurd itself, but still I was left with a sense that progress is meandering and whimsical. I remember being excited by Hurd's ambitions after studying Tanenbaum's OS book in university and drinking the microkernel kool-aid; now I'm too old a…

It’s like farmer’s market craft fair tech. Same vibes.

Last neckbeards standing?

Re: GNU Hurd News 2026-Q2

#79

Post by a34729t »

stackghost wrote: post #61
oytis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are calling a Linux (sorry, GNU/Linux) killer small silly stuff?

I know this is in jest, but because of the "hurr durr" connotations, only the absolute most bearded of free software zealot neckbeards are going to ever run GNU Hurd beyond simplytest driving it. Open source continues its unbroken streak of showing us why naming things is important.

That seems like an awesome reason to use it in an era of most software is an AI slopfest.

Re: GNU Hurd News 2026-Q2

#80

Post by ColdStream »

inigyou wrote: post #46
maplant wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as GNU/Linux, is in fact, just Linux.

Yeah GNU hasn't really been involved for a long time. It's Mozilla/Linux in reality. Not to mention the totally GNU-free distributions, like Alpine.

The efforts people will go to in order to avoid GPL3. Makes you wonder why?
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