5 ms·

Grits teeth... It's _still_ pointless. There's no chance of displacing Linux or the BSDs in practical terms, and there's no particularly interesting ideas in i

Grits teeth... It's _still_ pointless. There's no chance of displacing Linux or the BSDs in practical terms, and there's no particularly interesting ideas in it. We already know you can build a Unix on top of a microkernel and it will sorta work. Enough, already. Kill this late-1980s design and build something interesting already. Surely at least one of the things that have happened between 1990-2011 in hardware, software and networking warrants a rethink of OS assumptions rather than this stale rehashing?

p9idf 15y ago
What do you care what other programmers do with their time? The ideas in Hurd are particularly interesting enough to those who work on it. That alone justifies its continued development.
- onan_barbarian 15y ago
  This is disingenuous. Under this logic there's no such thing as a project that's more or less objectively interesting. If 999 programmers decide to work on 999 basically identical Soduku solvers, and 1 programmer decides to hack up a novel object recognition system with OpenCV, and all 1000 guys are equally keen on their own projects, we'll just have to all agree that all thousand projects are equally interesting and call it a day. I care because it's wasted effort that would be better spent elsewhere.
  - p9idf 15y ago
    The logic here is that your opinion on the value of the Hurd isn't objective and that there's no accounting for taste. The Hurd authors know the fruits of their labor far better than you do. If they don't consider their effort wasted and are happy with their results, what are you upset about? If programmers like working on things you don't like, that's their own business.
    - onan_barbarian 15y ago
      This isn't really about the Hurd, is it?
      - burgerbrain 15y ago
        This is about people sitting on their asses disparaging the work done by others in their freetime as "a waste of time". If we started saying that you were wasting your time with your hobby, you would be right in telling us to fuck off. "I care because it's wasted effort that would be better spent elsewhere." This idea that programmers must somehow "donate their free-time to the betterment of society" or whatever the hell you are suggesting is frankly quite offensive.
        derleth 15y ago
        > This is about people sitting on their asses OK, who here programs standing up? It's certainly possible at this point.
        onan_barbarian 15y ago
        Getting pissy about it doesn't change the fact that the Hurd serves no useful purpose and doesn't have an interesting idea animating it, just a series of shop-worn ideas from 2 decades ago. If I spent my off-hours building, say, a slightly different clone of Java that I'd started in 1996, you'd be entitled to tell me that I was wasting my time. In fact, this would be doing me a service. If I couldn't turn around and say, "well, Onanva is different from Java because of interesting features X, Y and Z" or "Onanva is about to take over from Java because I've got 100K users in beta and they're screaming for a commercial version" or whatever, then I'd have some serious introspection to do. What I wouldn't do is go into a screaming frenzy that someone who is "sitting on their ass" (whatever that means) is disparaging my precious, precious work and start running around with my dress over my head. I can't tell from your profiles whether you or Mr P9 have ever been in an environment where you get asked tough questions, but any decent CS school will make you run the "why is this interesting/useful" gauntlet repeatedly, especially if you want to get a PhD or something silly like that. The bulk of the cruel, cruel people who ask you these terrible questions will do so from a seated position, and it will be imperative on you to harden up and supply answers. Not every hobbyist has to deal with this sort of thing, but not everyone outside industry or academic research is incapable of doing so; see also Young Torvalds vs. Tanenbaum for a less pathetic approach to criticism. Programmers are free to do whatever they want; I doubt that a better OS will have much to do with the "betterment of society" in any case (you're not sure what I'm suggesting, but you're sure it's "quite offensive"). IMO they should work on projects that are objectively interesting. It's ok to disagree on what that might be, but no-one has been able to furnish a reason why building a UNIX clone on top of Mach (again, after cycling through several other underlying microkernels) is in fact interesting in 2011.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    > I care because it's wasted effort that would be better spent elsewhere. Too bad it's not your effort that's being used. If you want things you find interesting (and seemingly no one else do) you've got to be prepared to do them yourself.
glassx 15y ago
there's no particularly interesting ideas in it I sorta agree. I particularly would like to see operating systems implemented using JIT compilation and software isolation. Managed code running safely on the ring0 of the processor. Microsoft Singularity started this but I'd like to see the open source people trying something like that! I really think we need processor/architecture independency if we really want to achieve freedom.
- p9idf 15y ago
  Here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_operating_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_operating_system
- prodigal_erik 15y ago
  Sadly, neither JNode (Java) nor House (Haskell) look very active. I keep thinking I should start something though I'm sure there are hundreds of embryonic kernels out there already.
- wslh 15y ago
  SqueakNOS? http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/1762 http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/1762
- derleth 15y ago
  > I particularly would like to see operating systems implemented using JIT compilation and software isolation. Managed code running safely on the ring0 of the processor. Lisp Machines were arguably like this, except with microcode instead of JIT. AS/400 (IBM midrange systems, now called System i) does something like this as well, except the whole program is compiled from bytecode to machine code on first run, or whenever the bytecode on disk is newer than the machine code on disk. The biggest change is that you have either a trusted compiler, a garbage collector in the kernel, or both.
rbanffy 15y ago
Don't you think it's a bit tragic that the two most sophisticated OSs widely available are either direct descendants of or largely inspired by AT&T 60's technology, while the third is the bastard child of VMS? Try new ideas, prove them with a large audience and see what you can get from them. One of these days someone will come up with the idea that replaces Unix. Didn't happen until now, but the only way to be sure it never happens is to stop trying new ideas.
- yuhong 15y ago
  Yea, for one thing they all use null-terminated strings thanks to C (even Plan 9 unfortunately) which resulted in many problems.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    At least not all source files prefix those with "sz"
- dredmorbius 15y ago
  Don't you think it's a bit insightful that the two most sophisticated OSs widely available are either direct descendents of or largely inspired by AT&T 60's technology? That these technologies were highly modular, focused on a simple core, emerged as an independent (an unauthorized) side project at AT&T, and were immediately adapted and extended by the academic and research communities? The principle change that's come about in the descendant / inspired instances present today is that there's a strong assurance that the license of these projects is and will remain free, allowing, say, independent entities, individuals, and organizations to try new ideas, prove them with a large audience, and see what you can get from them. There will be an idea that replaces Unix. I don't know what it will be. However, it will be called Unix.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    > Don't you think it's a bit insightful that the two most sophisticated OSs widely available are either direct descendents of or largely inspired by AT&T 60's technology? It's meaningful, I agree, but I get the same feeling when I drive my car running on an internal combustion engine (although my car runs on ethanol) that my grandfather would easily recognize and, quite possibly, be able to repair.
beej71 15y ago
Perhaps you can pay them to not work on it. Kickstarter FTW!
- onan_barbarian 15y ago
  Kickstopper? :-) We used to joke about governmental 'Stop Grants' at our startup to match the 'Start Grants'. The idea would be that they would pay you to "please, just go away".
9999 15y ago
I'm surprised by the amount of negativity in this thread. I was initially going to say that writing a working, solid, free kernel was akin to climbing Everest in terms of human achievement. After the first guy does it, does it really diminish the others' contributions? If they do it using a micro-kernel, isn't that kind of like climbing the mountain without oxygen? But given the amount of community effort that is required it's really a lot bigger than the Everest analogy. Maybe it's more like space travel. Regardless, I feel like these devs are working towards something worthwhile, even if only they benefit from the experience (as they imply in the article, they've already directly benefited from their free work, good for them!). Is there some sort of opportunity cost that I'm not aware of here? Could we say that they should be working on developing a driver for the latest Nvidia graphics card for the Linux kernel instead? Would more people benefit from that? In the next sixty months, probably, in the next sixty years, it's a lot harder to say...

p9idf 15y ago

What do you care what other programmers do with their time? The ideas in Hurd are particularly interesting enough to those who work on it. That alone justifies its continued development.

onan_barbarian 15y ago
This is disingenuous. Under this logic there's no such thing as a project that's more or less objectively interesting. If 999 programmers decide to work on 999 basically identical Soduku solvers, and 1 programmer decides to hack up a novel object recognition system with OpenCV, and all 1000 guys are equally keen on their own projects, we'll just have to all agree that all thousand projects are equally interesting and call it a day. I care because it's wasted effort that would be better spent elsewhere.
- p9idf 15y ago
  The logic here is that your opinion on the value of the Hurd isn't objective and that there's no accounting for taste. The Hurd authors know the fruits of their labor far better than you do. If they don't consider their effort wasted and are happy with their results, what are you upset about? If programmers like working on things you don't like, that's their own business.
  - onan_barbarian 15y ago
    This isn't really about the Hurd, is it?
    - burgerbrain 15y ago
      This is about people sitting on their asses disparaging the work done by others in their freetime as "a waste of time". If we started saying that you were wasting your time with your hobby, you would be right in telling us to fuck off. "I care because it's wasted effort that would be better spent elsewhere." This idea that programmers must somehow "donate their free-time to the betterment of society" or whatever the hell you are suggesting is frankly quite offensive.
      - derleth 15y ago
        > This is about people sitting on their asses OK, who here programs standing up? It's certainly possible at this point.
      - onan_barbarian 15y ago
        Getting pissy about it doesn't change the fact that the Hurd serves no useful purpose and doesn't have an interesting idea animating it, just a series of shop-worn ideas from 2 decades ago. If I spent my off-hours building, say, a slightly different clone of Java that I'd started in 1996, you'd be entitled to tell me that I was wasting my time. In fact, this would be doing me a service. If I couldn't turn around and say, "well, Onanva is different from Java because of interesting features X, Y and Z" or "Onanva is about to take over from Java because I've got 100K users in beta and they're screaming for a commercial version" or whatever, then I'd have some serious introspection to do. What I wouldn't do is go into a screaming frenzy that someone who is "sitting on their ass" (whatever that means) is disparaging my precious, precious work and start running around with my dress over my head. I can't tell from your profiles whether you or Mr P9 have ever been in an environment where you get asked tough questions, but any decent CS school will make you run the "why is this interesting/useful" gauntlet repeatedly, especially if you want to get a PhD or something silly like that. The bulk of the cruel, cruel people who ask you these terrible questions will do so from a seated position, and it will be imperative on you to harden up and supply answers. Not every hobbyist has to deal with this sort of thing, but not everyone outside industry or academic research is incapable of doing so; see also Young Torvalds vs. Tanenbaum for a less pathetic approach to criticism. Programmers are free to do whatever they want; I doubt that a better OS will have much to do with the "betterment of society" in any case (you're not sure what I'm suggesting, but you're sure it's "quite offensive"). IMO they should work on projects that are objectively interesting. It's ok to disagree on what that might be, but no-one has been able to furnish a reason why building a UNIX clone on top of Mach (again, after cycling through several other underlying microkernels) is in fact interesting in 2011.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  > I care because it's wasted effort that would be better spent elsewhere. Too bad it's not your effort that's being used. If you want things you find interesting (and seemingly no one else do) you've got to be prepared to do them yourself.

glassx 15y ago

there's no particularly interesting ideas in it I sorta agree. I particularly would like to see operating systems implemented using JIT compilation and software isolation. Managed code running safely on the ring0 of the processor. Microsoft Singularity started this but I'd like to see the open source people trying something like that! I really think we need processor/architecture independency if we really want to achieve freedom.

p9idf 15y ago
Here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_operating_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_operating_system
prodigal_erik 15y ago
Sadly, neither JNode (Java) nor House (Haskell) look very active. I keep thinking I should start something though I'm sure there are hundreds of embryonic kernels out there already.
wslh 15y ago
SqueakNOS? http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/1762 http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/1762
derleth 15y ago
> I particularly would like to see operating systems implemented using JIT compilation and software isolation. Managed code running safely on the ring0 of the processor. Lisp Machines were arguably like this, except with microcode instead of JIT. AS/400 (IBM midrange systems, now called System i) does something like this as well, except the whole program is compiled from bytecode to machine code on first run, or whenever the bytecode on disk is newer than the machine code on disk. The biggest change is that you have either a trusted compiler, a garbage collector in the kernel, or both.

rbanffy 15y ago

Don't you think it's a bit tragic that the two most sophisticated OSs widely available are either direct descendants of or largely inspired by AT&T 60's technology, while the third is the bastard child of VMS? Try new ideas, prove them with a large audience and see what you can get from them. One of these days someone will come up with the idea that replaces Unix. Didn't happen until now, but the only way to be sure it never happens is to stop trying new ideas.

yuhong 15y ago
Yea, for one thing they all use null-terminated strings thanks to C (even Plan 9 unfortunately) which resulted in many problems.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  At least not all source files prefix those with "sz"
dredmorbius 15y ago
Don't you think it's a bit insightful that the two most sophisticated OSs widely available are either direct descendents of or largely inspired by AT&T 60's technology? That these technologies were highly modular, focused on a simple core, emerged as an independent (an unauthorized) side project at AT&T, and were immediately adapted and extended by the academic and research communities? The principle change that's come about in the descendant / inspired instances present today is that there's a strong assurance that the license of these projects is and will remain free, allowing, say, independent entities, individuals, and organizations to try new ideas, prove them with a large audience, and see what you can get from them. There will be an idea that replaces Unix. I don't know what it will be. However, it will be called Unix.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  > Don't you think it's a bit insightful that the two most sophisticated OSs widely available are either direct descendents of or largely inspired by AT&T 60's technology? It's meaningful, I agree, but I get the same feeling when I drive my car running on an internal combustion engine (although my car runs on ethanol) that my grandfather would easily recognize and, quite possibly, be able to repair.

beej71 15y ago

Perhaps you can pay them to not work on it. Kickstarter FTW!

onan_barbarian 15y ago
Kickstopper? :-) We used to joke about governmental 'Stop Grants' at our startup to match the 'Start Grants'. The idea would be that they would pay you to "please, just go away".

9999 15y ago

I'm surprised by the amount of negativity in this thread. I was initially going to say that writing a working, solid, free kernel was akin to climbing Everest in terms of human achievement. After the first guy does it, does it really diminish the others' contributions? If they do it using a micro-kernel, isn't that kind of like climbing the mountain without oxygen? But given the amount of community effort that is required it's really a lot bigger than the Everest analogy. Maybe it's more like space travel. Regardless, I feel like these devs are working towards something worthwhile, even if only they benefit from the experience (as they imply in the article, they've already directly benefited from their free work, good for them!). Is there some sort of opportunity cost that I'm not aware of here? Could we say that they should be working on developing a driver for the latest Nvidia graphics card for the Linux kernel instead? Would more people benefit from that? In the next sixty months, probably, in the next sixty years, it's a lot harder to say...