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I still haven't used Hurd, and at this point with the ridiculous diversity in hardware for desktop and laptops I don't think I could realistically use it for an

I still haven't used Hurd, and at this point with the ridiculous diversity in hardware for desktop and laptops I don't think I could realistically use it for anything outside of playing with it in a virtual machine or something. Still, a part of me wishes we lived in the alternative universe where Hurd had taken over the world instead of Linux. I don't know much about kernel design so I'm speaking out of my ass here, but I've always thought that the microkernel design was more elegant than the monolithic thing we ended up with. I don't know that the alternate universe would be "better", and maybe realistically a design like Hurd would never be able to take over the world like Linux, but it always seemed cooler to me. I honestly didn't really realize that they were still working on Hurd. Does anyone here use it for anything?

asveikau 1y ago
I seem to recall the Hurd people talking about cool scenarios like filesystem drivers written entirely in user mode that don't require root. Something like that. I booted it on real hardware sometime in the early 2000s, and it worked but was very anticlimactic. I do know that the Mach microkernel they based it on (also the basis for Apple's XNU kernel) is considered dated. Later microkernels are supposed to have better performance.
- tombert 1y ago
  Yeah, that's what I've always thought was interesting about microkernels; the ability to have a lot more stuff in user space always seemed like the obvious "correct" direction to me. I played with RedoxOS a bit in a virtual machine a few years ago [1], and it seemed cool, so maybe that can be the logical successor to something like Hurd. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedoxOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedoxOS
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - dietr1ch 1y ago
    Oh, I thought that was going to die shortly after Jeremy moved to System76, but it didn't, - https://www.redox-os.org/news/ https://www.redox-os.org/news/
    - cmrdporcupine 1y ago
      Project seems quite healthy to me. I was intending on trying it over the weekend but dragged into chores instead. I think there's some spark there.
      - goku12 1y ago
        Their matrix community (spaces) sees a healthy level of discussions. Even those related to project governance. The project is very much alive. And I believe that they're also porting the COSMIC desktop to Redox.
  - eadmund 1y ago
    > I played with RedoxOS a bit in a virtual machine a few years ago, and it seemed cool, so maybe that can be the logical successor to something like Hurd. A problem with RedoxOS is that it is not GPLed: contributors have no assurance that they and others will be able to use software built with their contributions. Microsoft, Apple, Google and Facebook all have plenty of money to pay engineers; they don’t need my contributions for free.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Which is how most drivers now work across macOS, Windows and Android/Linux. Unfortunely other UNIX clones rather keep going as "things were always done around here"
- bawolff 1y ago
  And now we have FUSE. The good ideas do get taken up by the mainstream.
  - marcosdumay 1y ago
    We have entire userspace network protocols, ePBF, and to some extent even ePool pooling ideas from microkernels. But A single disgruntled kernel dev is enough to stop Rust device drivers from existing, so no, the idea is still not here.
    - steveklabnik 1y ago
      That didn’t happen.
    - josefx 1y ago
      Even the Asahi Linux lead threatening Linus with a witchhunt against all kernel maintainers did not manage to finish off the ongoing Rust integration. People may not like it but it isn't going down easily.
  - asveikau 1y ago
    I feel like there's a difference between FUSE, an anomalous way to implement a filesystem, and having the user-space method be the primary mechanism to implement a filesystem. The latter ensures that the user-space thing doesn't have a quality gap with "real" FS drivers.
- goku12 1y ago
  I have heard even more fantastic ideas. For example, the IPC and memory protection being served by userspace servers (I don't know how valid this is, or if I understood this correctly). You could have features similar to namespaces and cgroups by default, without the extra logic and code. You could have had native containerization from the start.
bawolff 1y ago
> but I've always thought that the microkernel design was more elegant than the monolithic thing we ended up with. The thing with elegant systems is they usually don't succeed if the alternative is something pragmatic that has been battle tested.
- tombert 1y ago
  No question, and especially now with Linux running on billions of devices (if you include Android in that at least), it would be kind of difficult to make a case for a brand new desktop operating system. A lot of the weird edge cases for Linux have been found and fixed and ironed out through decades of continued use. I tried installing FreeBSD on a laptop years ago, which isn't really an "obscure" operating system or anything, but even that had a lot of compatibility problems with regards to drivers for wifi and GPUs, and even that would have a considerable head-start over something like Hurd if it were to try and take on the desktop world.
  - bee_rider 1y ago
    Speaking of BSD, in the hypothetical no-Linux universe, that would be the obvious candidate for taking the Linux spot, right? Rather than Hurd. BSD might even have won in the Linux-included universe, if some random events has panned out differently. Why not, right?
    - tombert 1y ago
      Didn't Linus even say that if he had known about BSD he wouldn't have bothered with Linux? I could totally see an alternate universe where BSD took over the world.
      - bombcar 1y ago
        It's arguable that the main reason Linux took off where BSD didn't was the fights and copyright arguments around BSD at the time. Had they not existed, or BSD been obviously free and clear, Linux might have been a footnote.
bombcar 1y ago
The "gnu" in the famous email is GNU Hurd; we're still waiting: >I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.
- dec0dedab0de 1y ago
  no it's not, the GNU system was already established by then,.and in use with other kernels. Linus was referring to GNU as a whole, not Hurd.
  - bombcar 1y ago
    GNU was a toolchain in search of a kernel; which was supposed to be Hurd. (It often got installed on top of “real” Unix because it was a damn good toolchain)
    - kpil 1y ago
      Still is. The standard tools were always sort of unergonomic on all of AIX, Sun/Solaris, DEC/Alpha, SCO, and *BSD. I don't know but it seems people (or at least old geezers) install GNU on top of Macs these days.
      - leoc 1y ago
        They famously did better than the proprietary shell tools in the original fuzzpocalypse https://users.cs.northwestern.edu/~robby/courses/395-495-2009-fall/fuzz-revisited.pdf https://users.cs.northwestern.edu/~robby/courses/395-495-200... . I also think I recall reading, somewhere on jwz dot org, something which purported to be an internal SGI email giving a dismal account of the quality of the Irix tools. GNU tools often have expanded feature sets, too. But I think that GNU-tools adopters were probably also driven by a standardisation impulse to at least have the same bugs and quirks as everyone else. Yes, here it is: “Software Usability II” by Tom Davis, the “Irix bloat memo” https://www.seriss.com/people/erco/sgi-irix-bloat-document.txt https://www.seriss.com/people/erco/sgi-irix-bloat-document.t... . Mind you, that bloat would probably look very modest nowadays.
gjsman-1000 1y ago
Curiously, in what no academic could have predicted, millions of people interact with a microkernel every day, and it was written by freaking Nintendo of all possible companies. (The Switch is a custom microkernel called Horizon; not FreeBSD, not Linux, not Android.) Almost every other consumer device is monolithic or hybrid. While the Switch was broken early, this was due to NVIDIA's buggy boot code. The operating system itself... you could literally pwn WebKit or the Bluetooth driver, and get absolutely nowhere. SciresM famously reimplemented the kernel in an open source fashion (Mesosphere) and the secure monitor code (Exosphere), and has publicly stated they have zero possible security bugs in his eyes. That was in 2020 and there have not been any reports of kernel security bugs since.
- comex 1y ago
  To be fair, microkernels are also highly successful in embedded devices and auxiliary processors. It’s just that you don’t usually directly interact with them. For example, Intel ME runs MINIX, and Apple’s Secure Enclave Processor runs L4. Also most OSes these days have some kind of hypervisor/secure monitor that’s more privileged than the regular kernel: TEE on Android, SPTM on Apple, VBS on Windows, and proprietary ones on all the game consoles. They vary in how much functionality they’re actually responsible for, but if it’s a significant amount then they tend to have a microkernel-ish design internally. Another example of microkernel-based systems you do interact with is car infotainment systems, where QNX has apparently seen a lot of use – though I think these days it’s being displaced by Linux and Android Automotive? I don’t actually know much about that industry.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

asveikau 1y ago

I seem to recall the Hurd people talking about cool scenarios like filesystem drivers written entirely in user mode that don't require root. Something like that. I booted it on real hardware sometime in the early 2000s, and it worked but was very anticlimactic. I do know that the Mach microkernel they based it on (also the basis for Apple's XNU kernel) is considered dated. Later microkernels are supposed to have better performance.

tombert 1y ago
Yeah, that's what I've always thought was interesting about microkernels; the ability to have a lot more stuff in user space always seemed like the obvious "correct" direction to me. I played with RedoxOS a bit in a virtual machine a few years ago [1], and it seemed cool, so maybe that can be the logical successor to something like Hurd. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedoxOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedoxOS
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- dietr1ch 1y ago
  Oh, I thought that was going to die shortly after Jeremy moved to System76, but it didn't, - https://www.redox-os.org/news/ https://www.redox-os.org/news/
  - cmrdporcupine 1y ago
    Project seems quite healthy to me. I was intending on trying it over the weekend but dragged into chores instead. I think there's some spark there.
    - goku12 1y ago
      Their matrix community (spaces) sees a healthy level of discussions. Even those related to project governance. The project is very much alive. And I believe that they're also porting the COSMIC desktop to Redox.
- eadmund 1y ago
  > I played with RedoxOS a bit in a virtual machine a few years ago, and it seemed cool, so maybe that can be the logical successor to something like Hurd. A problem with RedoxOS is that it is not GPLed: contributors have no assurance that they and others will be able to use software built with their contributions. Microsoft, Apple, Google and Facebook all have plenty of money to pay engineers; they don’t need my contributions for free.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Which is how most drivers now work across macOS, Windows and Android/Linux. Unfortunely other UNIX clones rather keep going as "things were always done around here"
bawolff 1y ago
And now we have FUSE. The good ideas do get taken up by the mainstream.
- marcosdumay 1y ago
  We have entire userspace network protocols, ePBF, and to some extent even ePool pooling ideas from microkernels. But A single disgruntled kernel dev is enough to stop Rust device drivers from existing, so no, the idea is still not here.
  - steveklabnik 1y ago
    That didn’t happen.
  - josefx 1y ago
    Even the Asahi Linux lead threatening Linus with a witchhunt against all kernel maintainers did not manage to finish off the ongoing Rust integration. People may not like it but it isn't going down easily.
- asveikau 1y ago
  I feel like there's a difference between FUSE, an anomalous way to implement a filesystem, and having the user-space method be the primary mechanism to implement a filesystem. The latter ensures that the user-space thing doesn't have a quality gap with "real" FS drivers.
goku12 1y ago
I have heard even more fantastic ideas. For example, the IPC and memory protection being served by userspace servers (I don't know how valid this is, or if I understood this correctly). You could have features similar to namespaces and cgroups by default, without the extra logic and code. You could have had native containerization from the start.

bawolff 1y ago

> but I've always thought that the microkernel design was more elegant than the monolithic thing we ended up with. The thing with elegant systems is they usually don't succeed if the alternative is something pragmatic that has been battle tested.

tombert 1y ago
No question, and especially now with Linux running on billions of devices (if you include Android in that at least), it would be kind of difficult to make a case for a brand new desktop operating system. A lot of the weird edge cases for Linux have been found and fixed and ironed out through decades of continued use. I tried installing FreeBSD on a laptop years ago, which isn't really an "obscure" operating system or anything, but even that had a lot of compatibility problems with regards to drivers for wifi and GPUs, and even that would have a considerable head-start over something like Hurd if it were to try and take on the desktop world.
- bee_rider 1y ago
  Speaking of BSD, in the hypothetical no-Linux universe, that would be the obvious candidate for taking the Linux spot, right? Rather than Hurd. BSD might even have won in the Linux-included universe, if some random events has panned out differently. Why not, right?
  - tombert 1y ago
    Didn't Linus even say that if he had known about BSD he wouldn't have bothered with Linux? I could totally see an alternate universe where BSD took over the world.
    - bombcar 1y ago
      It's arguable that the main reason Linux took off where BSD didn't was the fights and copyright arguments around BSD at the time. Had they not existed, or BSD been obviously free and clear, Linux might have been a footnote.

bombcar 1y ago

The "gnu" in the famous email is GNU Hurd; we're still waiting: >I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.

dec0dedab0de 1y ago
no it's not, the GNU system was already established by then,.and in use with other kernels. Linus was referring to GNU as a whole, not Hurd.
- bombcar 1y ago
  GNU was a toolchain in search of a kernel; which was supposed to be Hurd. (It often got installed on top of “real” Unix because it was a damn good toolchain)
  - kpil 1y ago
    Still is. The standard tools were always sort of unergonomic on all of AIX, Sun/Solaris, DEC/Alpha, SCO, and *BSD. I don't know but it seems people (or at least old geezers) install GNU on top of Macs these days.
    - leoc 1y ago
      They famously did better than the proprietary shell tools in the original fuzzpocalypse https://users.cs.northwestern.edu/~robby/courses/395-495-2009-fall/fuzz-revisited.pdf https://users.cs.northwestern.edu/~robby/courses/395-495-200... . I also think I recall reading, somewhere on jwz dot org, something which purported to be an internal SGI email giving a dismal account of the quality of the Irix tools. GNU tools often have expanded feature sets, too. But I think that GNU-tools adopters were probably also driven by a standardisation impulse to at least have the same bugs and quirks as everyone else. Yes, here it is: “Software Usability II” by Tom Davis, the “Irix bloat memo” https://www.seriss.com/people/erco/sgi-irix-bloat-document.txt https://www.seriss.com/people/erco/sgi-irix-bloat-document.t... . Mind you, that bloat would probably look very modest nowadays.

gjsman-1000 1y ago

Curiously, in what no academic could have predicted, millions of people interact with a microkernel every day, and it was written by freaking Nintendo of all possible companies. (The Switch is a custom microkernel called Horizon; not FreeBSD, not Linux, not Android.) Almost every other consumer device is monolithic or hybrid. While the Switch was broken early, this was due to NVIDIA's buggy boot code. The operating system itself... you could literally pwn WebKit or the Bluetooth driver, and get absolutely nowhere. SciresM famously reimplemented the kernel in an open source fashion (Mesosphere) and the secure monitor code (Exosphere), and has publicly stated they have zero possible security bugs in his eyes. That was in 2020 and there have not been any reports of kernel security bugs since.

comex 1y ago
To be fair, microkernels are also highly successful in embedded devices and auxiliary processors. It’s just that you don’t usually directly interact with them. For example, Intel ME runs MINIX, and Apple’s Secure Enclave Processor runs L4. Also most OSes these days have some kind of hypervisor/secure monitor that’s more privileged than the regular kernel: TEE on Android, SPTM on Apple, VBS on Windows, and proprietary ones on all the game consoles. They vary in how much functionality they’re actually responsible for, but if it’s a significant amount then they tend to have a microkernel-ish design internally. Another example of microkernel-based systems you do interact with is car infotainment systems, where QNX has apparently seen a lot of use – though I think these days it’s being displaced by Linux and Android Automotive? I don’t actually know much about that industry.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]