4 ms·

To think Linus wrote linux to be a "good enough" solution until hurd was ready. The entire hurd system is a literal metaphor for how waiting till you're perfe

To think Linus wrote linux to be a "good enough" solution until hurd was ready. The entire hurd system is a literal metaphor for how waiting till you're perfect means you'll never be good enough. At the risk of getting downvoted, I think hurd is cooked at this point. It certainly has some solid ideas that could live on in a modern system. They should retry rewriting it in rust (or zig) and at least have the opportunity to catch mindshare with new engineers just dabbling in systems engineering.

raverbashing 1y ago
GNU mentality in a nutshell Also I can't remember any more recent GNU projects that were successful
- tombert 1y ago
  I guess it sort of depends on how you define "success"; there's plenty of projects that still have some development and active users. TeXMacs was release in the late 90's (I think) and it's pretty neat and I think has at least some user base, and I think GNU Parallel was released in the mid 2000s and I know a number of people who use that (including myself).
- spookie 1y ago
  Jami, or Taler come to mind. The latter just released, so... Yeah. https://www.taler.net/en/news/2025-01.html https://www.taler.net/en/news/2025-01.html
  - ryukafalz 1y ago
    Guix as well. It's very good.
  - Karrot_Kream 1y ago
    I've never had success getting Jami working FWIW.
- goku12 1y ago
  There are several other important and relatively new GNU projects around - like GNU Radio, Jami, Poke (a semantics-aware binary editor), GNS (DNS alternative), Guile, Mailman, Octave, Parted, R, Shepherd, Taler, GnuCash, DDRescue and numerous others to name. But if you leave out the 'new' part, you'll discover a lot more fantastic gnu projects [1], including Linux's entire coreutils. If you spend enough time with some of them, you'll see how focused, clever, polished and well-integrated many of them are - like bc, units, wget and stow for example. You get the Emacs vibe from many of them. On top of that, a lot of important software are built on top of GNU software like glibc, gsl, gcc, groff, libjit, gmp, ghostscript, libtasn1, readline, aspell, tar (gnu format), termcap, bash, etc. And one thing in common with most of them is their longevity. [1] https://www.gnu.org/software/#allgnupkgs https://www.gnu.org/software/#allgnupkgs
  - raverbashing 1y ago
    A lot of those I think are > 20yrs now, so not necessarily "new" projects > including Linux's entire coreutils Ah yes I think I've heard of this GNU/Linux thing. To see if they will come ahead of Berkeley System Distribution. /s
ants_everywhere 1y ago
> They should retry rewriting it in rust (or zig) It's an antipattern to chase whatever language is being hyped the most at the moment. And it's probably bad from a community POV to deliberately attract developers who are chasing hype.
- freedomben 1y ago
  Yeah, projects like this really need people who will be into it for the long term, and using something like rust or zig is a big gamble. It eliminates a huge swath of potential long-term contributors who know C well and don't want to change, in exchange for an unknown group with an unknown amount of overlap.
  - cultofmetatron 1y ago
    > It eliminates a huge swath of potential long-term contributors who know C well and don't want to change, that pretty much described the current hurd dev community and its dying. I wouldn't advocate a full RIIR for most things but I think its a solid hail Mary to maybe make hurd relevant. The alternative is its going to be dead in a few years when the contributors all age out to spend time with their grandkids.
    - Y_Y 1y ago
      I'll believe it when Netcraft confirms it
    - piperswe 1y ago
      At this point... if you want to contribute to a UNIX-like microkernel-based OS written in Rust, Redox is right there
  - pengaru 1y ago
    > It eliminates a huge swath of potential long-term contributors who know C well and don't want to change I don't think that swath is as huge as you think it is in 2025. We were saying the same stuff during the Golang heydays ~8-9 years ago, and the C experts were already pretty fucking MIA. The Linux and systemd projects are both suffering from a lack of new blood interested in writing plain old C, and the old guard is aging out. Linux is embracing Rust, which should help. I imagine systemd will do the same thing once a Rust toolchain is required to build the average distro kernel.
freedomben 1y ago
I had a friend who got involved with Hurd many years back, and I asked him why he thought Hurd wasn't going to be a thing for non-hobbyists. He shared this (re-shared with permission but anonymously as he's still somewhat involved in GNU projects), which is just one guy's perspective of course. Would love to hear from others if this echoes their experiences. > GNU is full of brilliant people who can write great code, but there are a few issues that I don't see fixing: Rampant disagreement and individuals who like to work solo. This can be good sometimes, but for a project with that scope it just isn't possible. The group is also aging and isn't getting new blood. This can be good because people have more free time, but it also traps us in old familiar/comfortable patterns that make onboarding younger contributors even more difficult than it already is. The philosophy is also quite rigid. For good reasons I think as more "permissive" licenses have been used to abuse users extensively, but the limitations do come up quite a bit, mainly with adoption. I think too many people are just scarred still from an earlier world where proprietary was often the only real alternative, and change is hard.
- goku12 1y ago
  > The group is also aging and isn't getting new blood. This is very sad, because the GNU project pioneered a way of software design that's very different from anything we see on proprietary platforms, or even common Linux/BSD applications for that matter. This is best exemplified by Emacs - hackable to the core, with more than enough documentation and context help baked in to help you do just that. You can see the same philosophy at play in the Guix OS, the Shepherd (init), GNU Poke (semantics-aware binary editor) and many many other GNU software. It can be used easily by anyone, but it's absolute heaven for those who like to poke around (not a pun) the system. It nudges normal users towards becoming system hackers. The difference between GNU software and corporate-sponsored components (like systemd, avahi, gnome, policykit, PAM, Chrome, Firefox, etc) is stark. I have heard similar things about NetBSD and OpenBSD to a lesser extend, but I'm yet to give it a good try. The only other alternative I've seen is the suckless suite of software where the configuration is done in the source code itself, before it's compiled. But it can be slightly daunting even for power users. With the loss of that knowledge and philosophy, an entire generation will grow up without ever knowing a different way of computing that treats you as something more than just a consumer to be squeezed for every last penny, and the true power and potential of general purpose computing.
jnpnj 1y ago
gnu less-is-more
jowea 1y ago
Rust's main toy/experimental OS RedoxOS is already there and has a microkernel.

raverbashing 1y ago

GNU mentality in a nutshell Also I can't remember any more recent GNU projects that were successful

tombert 1y ago
I guess it sort of depends on how you define "success"; there's plenty of projects that still have some development and active users. TeXMacs was release in the late 90's (I think) and it's pretty neat and I think has at least some user base, and I think GNU Parallel was released in the mid 2000s and I know a number of people who use that (including myself).
spookie 1y ago
Jami, or Taler come to mind. The latter just released, so... Yeah. https://www.taler.net/en/news/2025-01.html https://www.taler.net/en/news/2025-01.html
- ryukafalz 1y ago
  Guix as well. It's very good.
- Karrot_Kream 1y ago
  I've never had success getting Jami working FWIW.
goku12 1y ago
There are several other important and relatively new GNU projects around - like GNU Radio, Jami, Poke (a semantics-aware binary editor), GNS (DNS alternative), Guile, Mailman, Octave, Parted, R, Shepherd, Taler, GnuCash, DDRescue and numerous others to name. But if you leave out the 'new' part, you'll discover a lot more fantastic gnu projects [1], including Linux's entire coreutils. If you spend enough time with some of them, you'll see how focused, clever, polished and well-integrated many of them are - like bc, units, wget and stow for example. You get the Emacs vibe from many of them. On top of that, a lot of important software are built on top of GNU software like glibc, gsl, gcc, groff, libjit, gmp, ghostscript, libtasn1, readline, aspell, tar (gnu format), termcap, bash, etc. And one thing in common with most of them is their longevity. [1] https://www.gnu.org/software/#allgnupkgs https://www.gnu.org/software/#allgnupkgs
- raverbashing 1y ago
  A lot of those I think are > 20yrs now, so not necessarily "new" projects > including Linux's entire coreutils Ah yes I think I've heard of this GNU/Linux thing. To see if they will come ahead of Berkeley System Distribution. /s

ants_everywhere 1y ago

> They should retry rewriting it in rust (or zig) It's an antipattern to chase whatever language is being hyped the most at the moment. And it's probably bad from a community POV to deliberately attract developers who are chasing hype.

freedomben 1y ago
Yeah, projects like this really need people who will be into it for the long term, and using something like rust or zig is a big gamble. It eliminates a huge swath of potential long-term contributors who know C well and don't want to change, in exchange for an unknown group with an unknown amount of overlap.
- cultofmetatron 1y ago
  > It eliminates a huge swath of potential long-term contributors who know C well and don't want to change, that pretty much described the current hurd dev community and its dying. I wouldn't advocate a full RIIR for most things but I think its a solid hail Mary to maybe make hurd relevant. The alternative is its going to be dead in a few years when the contributors all age out to spend time with their grandkids.
  - Y_Y 1y ago
    I'll believe it when Netcraft confirms it
  - piperswe 1y ago
    At this point... if you want to contribute to a UNIX-like microkernel-based OS written in Rust, Redox is right there
- pengaru 1y ago
  > It eliminates a huge swath of potential long-term contributors who know C well and don't want to change I don't think that swath is as huge as you think it is in 2025. We were saying the same stuff during the Golang heydays ~8-9 years ago, and the C experts were already pretty fucking MIA. The Linux and systemd projects are both suffering from a lack of new blood interested in writing plain old C, and the old guard is aging out. Linux is embracing Rust, which should help. I imagine systemd will do the same thing once a Rust toolchain is required to build the average distro kernel.

freedomben 1y ago

I had a friend who got involved with Hurd many years back, and I asked him why he thought Hurd wasn't going to be a thing for non-hobbyists. He shared this (re-shared with permission but anonymously as he's still somewhat involved in GNU projects), which is just one guy's perspective of course. Would love to hear from others if this echoes their experiences. > GNU is full of brilliant people who can write great code, but there are a few issues that I don't see fixing: Rampant disagreement and individuals who like to work solo. This can be good sometimes, but for a project with that scope it just isn't possible. The group is also aging and isn't getting new blood. This can be good because people have more free time, but it also traps us in old familiar/comfortable patterns that make onboarding younger contributors even more difficult than it already is. The philosophy is also quite rigid. For good reasons I think as more "permissive" licenses have been used to abuse users extensively, but the limitations do come up quite a bit, mainly with adoption. I think too many people are just scarred still from an earlier world where proprietary was often the only real alternative, and change is hard.

goku12 1y ago
> The group is also aging and isn't getting new blood. This is very sad, because the GNU project pioneered a way of software design that's very different from anything we see on proprietary platforms, or even common Linux/BSD applications for that matter. This is best exemplified by Emacs - hackable to the core, with more than enough documentation and context help baked in to help you do just that. You can see the same philosophy at play in the Guix OS, the Shepherd (init), GNU Poke (semantics-aware binary editor) and many many other GNU software. It can be used easily by anyone, but it's absolute heaven for those who like to poke around (not a pun) the system. It nudges normal users towards becoming system hackers. The difference between GNU software and corporate-sponsored components (like systemd, avahi, gnome, policykit, PAM, Chrome, Firefox, etc) is stark. I have heard similar things about NetBSD and OpenBSD to a lesser extend, but I'm yet to give it a good try. The only other alternative I've seen is the suckless suite of software where the configuration is done in the source code itself, before it's compiled. But it can be slightly daunting even for power users. With the loss of that knowledge and philosophy, an entire generation will grow up without ever knowing a different way of computing that treats you as something more than just a consumer to be squeezed for every last penny, and the true power and potential of general purpose computing.

jnpnj 1y ago

gnu less-is-more

jowea 1y ago

Rust's main toy/experimental OS RedoxOS is already there and has a microkernel.