Hurd Progresses - Debian GNU/Hurd by end of 2012?

Serious question: what's this for? It doesn't seem to be an interesting research project, and shows no sign of being useful in a pragmatic sense.<p>Surely a clean-sheet design started _now_ would be more interesting and perhaps even useful than a 21-year-old microkernel. Think about all the changes in architecture, networks, storage, etc.<p>We're in a world with consumer processors with 4-8 cores and hardware multithreading, GPUs that rival or exceed (in certain domains) the processing grunt of the CPUs, network cards that can talk to L2 cache, SSDs, etc.<p>Surely enough has changed that a clean-sheet design could be a lot more exciting - and even more practical - than trying to finish a design that hasn't succeeded for 2 decades. A clean-sheet design would at least be interesting - we already know you can build a workable system on top of a microkernel.<p>This isn't a claim to know what a clean sheet design would look like; I haven't really looked seriously at OS research in 15 years. I just strongly suspect you might do radically different, interesting designs in 2011 vs 1990.

I've occasionally thought it would be an interesting project to try to organize some kind of "Let's finish Hurd for them" meet up, maybe in conjunction with some major conference that a lot of Linux kernel hackers attend.

That would be nice, but honestly I doubt it since they have been trying to release it for longer than I have been alive.<p>Anyway the Linux kernel is good enough, so the effort seems wasted.

I played seriously with Hurd in the early 2000s, and remember really loving many of its ideas. The user space file systems (which Fuse does for other OSes) were quite cool. I can't imagine that much of the good stuff Hurd promised hasn't already been adopted by others.

It would be nice if everyone take some time off linux to help with Hurd. Participation and write 1 line of code can go a long way in helping them along :). I really want to see Hurd completed.

How well does Hurd compare to Linux?

Is Hurd licensed under GPLv3? There is a reason why Linux isn't.

I think Debian already works with HURD using Mach 4 as long as the core libraries include extra header information(1). I believe this process is called "porting"(2) in Debian lingo but involves the whole distribution, i.e. just core libraries but driver frameworks as well. When I think of porting, I think of rewriting in another language. This is a patching job to me, massive as it may be, but whatever.<p>My information only comes from my research made the better part of a decade ago(3) when they were seriously looking to port the microkernel to L4 from Mach 4(4), but sadly it appears that work was abandoned around 2006 [Dunno, why? It might be started again]. I suspect the low level switch had a lot to do with interest in a better kernel in OS X than what Darwin(5), XNU(6) on the Mac, could provide(7). In the Panther, pre-Leopard days there was a lot of interest in this(8) kind of project: large-scale microkernels(9).<p>I don't know if this effort will include the port from L4(10) with the Mach abstraction API to "save" the prior work in getting Mach to work with standard Debian without the extra header requirements.<p>Anyway, I'm going to get some coffee and lunch. If anyone wants to fund an idea like this, I would like to any of the number of amazing things that they are doing with non-tricyclic antidepressants these days. Just look at the good it did for Tony Soprano.<p>(1) <a href="http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install" rel="nofollow">http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install</a><p>(2) <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd/porting/guidelines.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd/porting/guidelines.htm...</a><p>(3) <a href="http://www.shakthimaan.com/installs/debian-t41.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.shakthimaan.com/installs/debian-t41.html</a> [Not me]<p>(4) <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/microkernel/mach.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/microkernel/mach.html</a><p>(5) <a href="http://darwinbuild.macosforge.org/" rel="nofollow">http://darwinbuild.macosforge.org/</a><p>(6) <a href="http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgramming/About/About.html" rel="nofollow">http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin...</a><p>(7) I don't have any insider information. I'm just a developer.<p>(8) Mac OSX Panther for Unix Geeks, Brian Jepson, ISBN-13: 978-0596006075, Chapter 7<p>(9) <a href="http://www.ertos.nicta.com.au/software/darbat/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ertos.nicta.com.au/software/darbat/</a><p>(10) <a href="http://kilobug.free.fr/hurd/pres-en/abstract/html/abstract.html" rel="nofollow">http://kilobug.free.fr/hurd/pres-en/abstract/html/abstract.h...</a>