Hello, On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 10:25 AM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I think Marek's work is interesting on several levels. For one, Mach was > originally created by taking a BSD kernel, throwing out the UNIX stuff, > and implementing some generic primitives (IPC, external pager interface) > instead. Doing the same with a modern BSD kernel actually seems the most > pragmatic approach to getting a modern Mach... > Hm, interesting. Do you think this can be adopted as a basis for a full-blown strategy of modernizing the Hurd and making it more interesting to ordinary users? Adding the Mach functionality while leaving in the UNIX stuff in place, > also seems an interesting option: It would allow playing with Hurd > stuff, while still running a mature system at the same time. In fact, we > pondered the idea of running Hurd on Linux in the past... > > There are two somewhat distinct use cases for that: For one, a complete > Hurd could be run on top of some other system, as a stable base for > experimentation, without having to care about the microkernel stuff. > > The other is related to the hurdish application stuff I have been > repeatedly talking about. Having a partial Hurd environment running on > top of other systems would be very helpful here I believe: It opens the > possibily of writing hurdish applications, and yet making them available > to a wider audience, by offering a way to run them on other systems as > well. > > I am deeply convinced that this would help spreading the Hurd. People > could easily test the hurdish stuff on their normal system. They could > see that these concepts really make sense -- and eventually grow a > desire to use The Real Thing, to get even more benefits. > I don't want to look stubborn, but the following question comes to my mind: can it be guaranteed that the Hurd running on top of another system will be exactly the Hurd running on top of Mach? My question arises out of some obscure cygwin issues I've come across while groping on the Internet: people would sometimes complain of the fact that things which work okay on Linux won't work like that on Windows. > The issue you are raising here is really a generic one. People are often > debating whether it's a good thing or a bad thing to port free software > to non-free systems for example. IHMO it's decidedly a good thing: > Inertia is the main obstacle for people to migrate to another system -- > they don't want to give up their familiar environment. Being able to use > free applications while staying in the familiar environment, allows > people to get familiar with the free software by and by, and the final > move to an entirely free system will be considerably less painful. > > Note that the initial success of the GNU software stemmed mostly from > the fact that GNU programs were running on all kinds of UNIX systems... > Hm, you are definitely right. The only thing that troubles me is the question I've just asked above. I briefly covered some of these aspects in: > > > http://tri-ceps.blogspot.com/2005/09/welcom<http://tri-ceps.blogspot.com/2005/09/welcome-to-hell.html> > e-to-hell.html <http://tri-ceps.blogspot.com/2005/09/welcome-to-hell.html> > I've scanned your post and I liked HELL (especially the name ;-) ). Nevertheless, you do say the emulation will not be perfect, so I'm just interested whether it will be okay or not in your opinion :-) The second question is that the emulation of Hurd on a different platform may once prove to be less error-prone that the Hurd itself (correct me if I am wrong, please), so can we consider the possibility that at a definite moment more attention will belong to the emulation layer and it will become the *main* thing, instead of the Hurd? (this was actually what made me think that Hurd community shall not celebrate translators on NetBSD). Regards, scolobb
