The preliminary rump kernel support that arrived just a bit more than a week ago is quite promising, if still quite rudimentary. That said, a patched MPlayer linking to rump libraries has been able to play OGG files on a Hurd system: <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2015-08/msg00027.html" rel="nofollow">https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2015-08/msg00027...</a><p>Though obviously in the very initial stages, the implications of this development taken to its end could be enormous. Have the GNU Hurd implement translator or server interfaces to the rump drivers, plug it on top of an immutable package and configuration management suite like Guix (actually already being done), and for the first time in history you have a complete, general-purpose microkernel-based Unix-compatible (but beyond plain Unix) system that could rival the likes of GNU/Linux. The great thing about it is that the Hurd isn't afraid to break POSIX semantics where beneficial. This makes it have, among other things, processes running under multiple uids, true Plan 9-style namespacing, unprivileged mounts, token-based authentication, and so forth.<p>I've been playing with it on-and-off (including cross-toolchains) and been pondering about Mach kernel emulation on Linux. A pure userland server would be most desirable, but faces real changes with modeling port rights as file descriptors sent over ancillary data, how to reliably handle user-level page fault handling on a per-application basis, mapping VM regions across address space boundaries and properly emulating RPC. Kip Macy did successful work on a port of OSF Mach from the MkLinux sources as a FreeBSD kernel module for use with launchd, XPC and other OS X modules, so I think that might end up being a concession I'll look into taking one day. I'm occupied with other projects in the meantime.<p>It'd be also funny to have Linux "eat" itself in such a manner by becoming a host for the Hurd. Poetic justice, I suppose. But I'll wait to see if the rump kernel stuff pans out first.<p>(MINIX 3 is great too, much better microkernel, but it's more meant for reliability rather than exposing end-user flexibility like Hurd does with translators. It also doesn't come close to the ~81% of Debian building as is with Hurd, and the MINIX devs themselves are positioning it as an embedded platform rather than general-purpose.)
It's awesome to see Hurd continuing to progress. It doesn't matter that "Hurd isn't ready for mainstream use" or any of that stuff. Even if it <i>never</i> becomes "ready for mainstream use" it's valuable to have people experimenting and researching alternative approaches. This and Plan9 both still play important roles, and I expect that, at a minimum, developments coming out of one or both projects will continue to influence Linux and other "mainstream" OS's.<p>Besides, it's just plain fun to play around with operating systems. I think I have an extra box laying around here idle that would be a good place to experiment with Hurd a bit.
Link to the talk: <a href="http://gensho.acc.umu.se/pub/debian-meetings/2015/debconf15/Debian_GNUHurd_status_update.webm" rel="nofollow">http://gensho.acc.umu.se/pub/debian-meetings/2015/debconf15/...</a><p>Other DebConf15 videos: <a href="http://ftp.acc.umu.se/pub/debian-meetings/2015/debconf15/" rel="nofollow">http://ftp.acc.umu.se/pub/debian-meetings/2015/debconf15/</a>
Practical question: If I was to get some cheap hardware, like a Chromebook, could I get a Debian GNU/Hurd development environment dual booting on it? What would I have available? I'd at least want a decent shell, tmux and vim and support for the display's full resolution.<p>I suppose the easier route would be a virtual machine, but I think being immersed in it would be good.<p>I've wanted to get into kernel or other low-level development for a while and this seems like a perfect entry point. Linux seems too complicating on the surface which is intimidating. And politics suck (see systemd).
the last document linked to at the end is a really good read too - <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.37.9653&rep=rep1&type=pdf" rel="nofollow">http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.37....</a>,<p>Also I agree with him on the fdisk/mke2fs, I've often asked myself the exact same question. aparently, its not a so popular opinion though, since they're always tucked away in sbin...
I was hoping they will mention something about crosshurd, but there was nothing, and crosshurd doesn't work on recent debian anymore. I'd love to see some way to install from an existing system.
Linking to the slides without the actual presentation should be punishable by death. The entire point of slides is to <i>supplement</i> the presenter's speech, so if they're completely self-explanatory without any talking, then you're doing your presentation wrong.
>Hardware support
>● i686
>● start of 64bit support<p>WTF? They started 30 years ago and still on an 32bit architecture nobody cares anymore?<p>Beside that, I really don't get the point of all this, seriously. Not from a technological benefit, be warned, but from a user perspective the benefit is almost intangible. Why should the average sysadmin care? Linux is a rock solid kernel that does everything, what is the niche that Hurd is filling?