Hacker News Reader

Comment by wesleyac | Hacker News Reader

Why, GNU, Why did you have to make a kernel?

Ok, I get that the GNU has always wanted to make an OS that they can get credit for (GNU/Linux folks, I'm looking at you), but still.

I suppose that they can make the case for making a non-monolithic kernel, but that doesn't seem necessary to me.

I feel like all the years of dev work on HURD could have been better spent on other projects, but it's not my time :(

Thoughts?

View on HN

Sometimes I think people could better spend their time on something more useful. Then I realise I'm sitting in front of a web browser browsing Hacker News. :)

Why not? There's always room for improvement. Beats another JS app framework.

particularly another poorly-documented, monolithic, over-marketed JS app framework

For one, recall that the HURD project was started before Linux. At the time, there was no free Unix-like kernel they could work on; the rest of GNU had been developed on proprietary kernels.

> I feel like all the years of dev work on HURD could have been better spent on other projects, but it's not my time :(

I don't really think it's nearly as many developer years as you think. HURD isn't that big a project; it's a few people, working on what they want to work on. Most of the actual development effort goes into the Linux kernel.

There's room for more than one free kernel out there. Heck, there's room for a lot. There are still people using and developing FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonflyBSD, Darwin, Haiku, ReactOS, and more.

This. If you read RMS' announcement for GNU [1] it had to have a kernel because in 1983 there wasn't a kernel. And an "operating system" was defined as its kernel, its compiler, and the tools around that and using it in day to day work.

So it starts first on a compiler, then to basic libraries, and then to a kernel. I applaud the team for continuing on the path set forth in that announcement.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6457525

I feel like all the years of dev work on HURD could have been better spent on other projects, but it's not my time

For many years, it's been the effort of a handful of volunteers. Lots of GNU development has continued aside from HURD, so it's not as if HURD development has been a significant drain on getting any other useful work done.

http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/faq/how_many_developers.htm...

Not GNU projects but relevant and different kernels / operating systems:

http://www.barrelfish.org/

https://github.com/xomboverlord/xomb

http://www.returninfinity.com/baremetal.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeL4

I don't consider any of these to be a waste of time in the least; some move quicker than others but ultimately every one of these projects is advancing the state of the art and we may one day see the fruit of this difficult type of work (building kernels from scratch).

Don't forget templeos...as trippy as it is.

Absolutely, TempleOS is an amazing piece of work including its programming language (Holy C).

Completely agreed. I wonder if it will ever 'leave' his hands, as it really is a nice language, a well thought out C improvement (for the uninitiated - http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Doc/HolyC.html ). I'm very versed with who the creator is, and his personality, but honestly think he may be one of the smartest people in the field. It's a shame more people don't take him seriously(and to their point, I don't always blame them).

People tend to not take crazy people seriously. That's kinda sad because the guy is indeed one of the smartest people in the field.

I just hope he gets some help and is able to work his issues out.

I forgot about HaikuOS too - I love what those guys are doing. Can't remember if they wrote the kernel from scratch too?

Sort of. It's based on the NewOS kernel written by Travis Geiselbrecht ( http://newos.org ) who in turned based many of the concepts on his experience as a BeOS kernel engineer. The Haiku project chose the NewOS kernel because it was open and used reasonably similar concepts and goals as the BeOS kernel did, which they'd otherwise need to emulate.

Huh, I always assumed that HURD was just GNU politics, what with the all the GNU tools with linux, while the GNU's original goal was an OS complete with kernel. When I look at it in this light, HURD makes more sense. I do disagree with saying that every OS advances the state of the art though, a lot of them will probably end up as *nix clones. I have respect for anyone who builds a kernel from scratch, but I also think that most of them ad totally batshit insane (Linus included.). They do great work, but I didn't understand why.

Why wouldn't they be advancing it? It might not be academically rigorous in some cases (in some cases it is) but every single project is doing something unique and pushing the sphere of known solutions to problems further out. Very few of the projects even want to be nix clones and are exploring areas that aren't explored by the nixes because they are too big and static now experiment (for good reason! it isn't a fault).

It was very detrimental for the project, but it's a key part of the research/thinking/design. If you watch Hurd demos, you'll quickly see how moving bits outside the kernel gives a lot of freedom to the users. In terms of ideas and performance. Samuel Thibault 2011 (fragile) demo included mounting an iso image from a ftp in a matter of seconds. This pops from the OS design.

As someone else mentioned, the HURD was started before Linux existed back when micro-kernels was all the rage in academia.

Stallman said that by using the mach-kernel they hoped to get finished faster, as it turned out this was a big mistake which he acknowledged as his own and as soon as Linux took off they started focusing on improving the GNU toolchain in conjunction with Linux.

The Hurd is still in development today because there are people who like working on it during their spare-time, just like all the other alternative kernel/os projects out there.

I'd argue that from the perspective of an operating system vetting security, a good microkernel implementation with userspace drivers would be a great win. Even when you can vet the entire linux code base (for the most part) and use only the free drivers, you still have multiple attack vectors available to possibly get code running in kernel space. Which is bad.

A lot of people (myself included) probably don't think Linux is the last kernel to rule them all, ever. It doesn't distribute itself well, it is quite large, and its speed is derived from its massive developer staff. Simplifying your kernel doesn't really matter when it has hundreds of active contributors, but what about in a hundred years when all the current Linux devs are gone, and you have to try to get new generations to adopt the code base and maintain it?

There are heaps of open source projects that do the same thing. Count the text editors, window managers, game emulators, audio players, the list goes on forever. This is the _second_ kernel in the same kind of space.

First, actually. :-)

Thoughts?

Competition makes everybody better in the long run. Also, sometimes things are just ahead of their time, and don't "come into their own" until later. It's still entirely possible that Hurd will prove to be very important and useful for some class of application(s).

I feel like all the years of dev work on HURD could have been better spent on other projects, but it's not my time

Exactly. The people working on it chose to work on it, and none of us have any standing to tell them that they were wrong for doing so.

It's not wasted. I've seen the design concepts of HURD as an inspiration for other projects and people experimented with them. Even I got some (dumbed down) ideas that I didn't limit to software. Sometimes I think there's some similarity to the SOA approach (pretty everything's a server/service), just that HURD had the ideas earlier. But that might be a too high-level view now.

Thanks for all the answers.

I can understand why people are making HURD, but I'll stick to Linux for now :P.

Because a kernel is an essential part of a complete operating system.

So that they can get credit? I don't think the GNU Project had anything to do with achieving reputation, but rather to spread an ideal of free software.

Hurd development has been pretty sporadic in general. Just look at GNU's project catalogue: it's vast. That said, if Stallman hadn't egotistically intervened into Bushnell's original plan to adopt the 4.4BSD kernel, the Hurd could have stood a chance.

But no development is a waste.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com