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> A question -- could you give us a quick overview of the differences between HURD and |
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> the Linux kernel? I'm curious about what new things HURD offers. |
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This deserves a longer answer and I will post one when I have a bigger block |
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of time, but a few observations: |
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The hardware support is still much worse than linux. There isn't incentive to |
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do too much there for the Hurd team yet (chicken and egg... need a dist before |
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anyone really cares, need drivers to make a dist interesting enough to care |
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about). It supports a modest list of ethernet cards and scsi controllers, |
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and with X can support whatever video cards X can, but it as of now has no |
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sound driver at all. |
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Things are funky because it is a microkernel. For instance, there is a login server, which runs under the 'login' id. You login at a prompt like |
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login> login myusername |
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This is different than the unix 'getty' stuff. |
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A great deal of commands you normally run (mount, ifconfig, etc...) are obviated by a new command, "settrans". This is because ext2fs, cd9660, pf_inet, etc, i |
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are translator daemons, not just devices in the unix sense. This "herd of |
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daemons" is what really makes this different from Linux. The kernel is |
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very minimal. These daemons do sort of what modules do under linux, though |
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the analogy isn't really appropriate. One of the side effects of this |
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is that the daemons are proper programs. You can run them with --help |
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apart from settrans, and they will list their own options. How often I |
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wish I could do that with a module. |
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Another good thing about this is people can develop kernel version independent |
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modules; making the distribution of drivers a lot simpler. Ironically, this |
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will probably encourage the distribution of binary drivers if Hurd does |
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catch on. |
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There are some things that don't work as of now. Irritatingly, one of them is |
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df. Booting from CD is also a problem. Both of these apparently stem from |
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the way inodes are currently handled. These aren't insurmountable, but it |
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doesn't look like a lot of process has been made. It is currently x86 only |
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as far as I know. The limited hardware support is reminiscent of the |
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oldest versions of Linux. |
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BTW, I am not a Hurd developer; just a guy that installed it for kicks, so if |
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my information is not factual, please keep me honest. I am enthusiastic about |
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this because the most recent debian builds are better than I think a lot of |
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people realize, and there is a lot of opportunity to shape the way it evolves, |
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and the Portage system sounds like the right way, the GNU way, to do it. |
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--Gabriel |