Debian GNU/Hurd 2019 Released • Hacker News Board

Re: Debian GNU/Hurd 2019 Released

#91

Post by gsam » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 10:51 PM UTC

farisjarrah wrote: post #66

153791098c wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hurd is a GNU project so it doesn't even really need a second mention, it only needs that mention because there is a competing kernel (Linux) that is used with the system. Otherwise it's just known as the GNU system. The kernel is pretty irrelevant for most users, we don't call it Android/Linux or Windows/NT for a reason. A kernel is not an operating system. Calling the whole OS Linux is both inaccurate and does not…

You're argument holds water, but the problem is when we start getting into OS's that actually don't ship any of the GNU userland. The classic example is Alpine Linux. Do we call that BusyBox/Linux? WSL 1 was a super weird anti-example where Microsoft skipped out on the Linux and shipped GNU stuff and still called it Linux. I think the colloquial naming convention became something like Kleenex or Google where we defau…

Depends on what you mean by Linux. The ABI Microsoft were attempting to emulate was absolutely Linux. (This API business is exactly the issue with Oracle vs Google over Java).

Re: Debian GNU/Hurd 2019 Released

#92

Post by colanderman » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 11:18 PM UTC

Thev00d00 wrote: post #3

> Debian GNU/Hurd is currently available for the i386 architecture with about 80% of the Debian archive, and more to come! Does Hurd still not support amd64?!

That's ironic, given that last I heard anything about Hurd, it was that partition size was constrained by bus width (i.e., it couldn't access disks larger than 2 GiB on most computers at the time), but since everyone was moving to 64-bit architectures soon enough, that wouldn't be an issue. (Not sure where I heard that particular excuse, but the explanation why is here: [1])

32-bit userland makes Hurd basically unusable for many server applications, where multi-gigabyte in-memory lookup tables are critical for performance.

[1] https://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=44492&cid=46...

Re: Debian GNU/Hurd 2019 Released

#93

Post by anthony_doan » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 12:48 AM UTC

murderfs wrote: post #71

anthony_doan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for the developer of Hurd. But I think it's fun and something different. It's one of the few OS up there that seems to be able to take advantage of multicores. Other such as barrelfish and dragonflyBSD.

??? Hurd doesn't even support SMP yet.

That's correct Hurd doesn't support SMP yet [1]. In theory it should and I'm waiting for that.

Kind of like how I waited for HAMMER2.

1. https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/faq/smp.html

Re: Debian GNU/Hurd 2019 Released

#94

Post by earenndil » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 3:18 AM UTC

gnulinux wrote: post #89

earenndil wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian GNU/GNU?

I mean "GNU/Linux" is supposed to mean "GNU with Linux" i.e. GNU userspace with Linux kernel. GNU/GNU makes some sense but clearly is redundant. It's just GNU as in GNU userspace and kernel.

Yes. It was a joke, to poke fun at the people who refer to linux OSes as GNU/linux.

Re: Debian GNU/Hurd 2019 Released

#95

Post by poelzi » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 1:03 PM UTC

Maybe if Hurd decide to rewrite their kernel in rust I would give a s@#!, but since it's still a none usable kernel after decades of debugging and development, maybe it's ripe for /dev/null ?

Re: Debian GNU/Hurd 2019 Released

#96

Post by m463 » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 12:43 AM UTC

sverige wrote: post #43

Ylodi wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hurd is like Mazda Wankel engine. :-)

Except Mazda actually sold millions of cars that ran down the road with the Wankel engine.

The wankel was actually like Hurd at one point, everybody thought it would be the next big thing and many car manufacturers had wankel engines. Mazda stuck it out and funded it into production.

Re: Debian GNU/Hurd 2019 Released

#97

Post by m463 » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 12:47 AM UTC

earenndil wrote: post #85

gnulinux wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hurd is the official kernel of GNU project, so essentially it's just GNU. You could call it Debian GNU but I guess since that's confusing they decided to call it Debian GNU/Hurd.

Debian GNU/GNU?

also Hurd/Hird

Re: Debian GNU/Hurd 2019 Released

#98

Post by m463 » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 12:54 AM UTC

blodovnik wrote: post #8

What does Hurd uniquely solve?

It was probably more unique when it started 30+ years ago.

The idea was a mach microkernel + daemons/message passing to do higher-level things.

Note the microkernel was also used in nextstep and now macos.

Re: Debian GNU/Hurd 2019 Released

#99

Post by ric2b » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 3:06 PM UTC

amaccuish wrote: post #81

153791098c wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hurd is a GNU project so it doesn't even really need a second mention, it only needs that mention because there is a competing kernel (Linux) that is used with the system. Otherwise it's just known as the GNU system. The kernel is pretty irrelevant for most users, we don't call it Android/Linux or Windows/NT for a reason. A kernel is not an operating system. Calling the whole OS Linux is both inaccurate and does not…

> The kernel is pretty irrelevant for most users For most users, so is the command line. So when a user is on a Gnome desktop, we can call it Gnome/Linux right? Since a normal user doesn't touch the terminal?

Hell, for most users what matters is the browser, let's just go with Firefox/Linux.