GNUnification
Hi!
Thanks to all who have taken part in this discussion so far. I have a
proposal for you.
GNU/Linux and GNU/Hurd are ready to be reunited, both in terms of
technology, and I believe also in political atmosphere. Let's work on
GNUnification together. Here are some ideas (I don't claim that they
are original... just the voicing of things that have been in my head):
* A unified ``GNU Boot Disk'', containing GRUB, Linux, Mach, and the
statically-linked Hurd bootstrap filesystem (ext2fs for now). GRUB
would start, and give a menu:
Start GNU/Linux (stable)
Start GNU/Hurd (experimental)
Install GRUB
[...]
Depending on what the user chooses, GRUB loads some things into memory
and prompts for the next disk in the selected series (e.g. GNU/Linux
Disk #1, or GNU/Hurd Disk #1). Installation continues from there.
* Source-compatible tools. As was suggested by Enrique Zanardi, we
should start with Debian's existing installation tools, and make them
more generic so that they work under both Linux and the Hurd with
little or no modifications.
* Peaceful installs. Disk partitioning would be completely
optional... the Hurd (and possibly Linux in the future) can run so
that its root directory is actually a subdirectory of another
filesystem. This would allow people to install both GNU/Hurd and
GNU/Linux on the same partition, even before we get binary
compatibility.
* Moving towards GNU filesystem hierarchy for package layout (at least
for GNU/Hurd)... 90% of this task would be accomplished by doing `cd /
&& ln -s . usr' (blagh... I'll be the first in line to work on getting
rid of this hack once GNU/Hurd is easy to bootstrap). The rest are
just minor changes to the package description files. Perhaps we could
use a conditional mechanism in dpkg, much like RPM's `%ifos ... %else
... %endif' in order to implement GNU/Hurd changes without affecting
the stability of Debian packages.
For the time being, we'd still have separate binaries because the Hurd
glibc interface is not yet binary-compatible with Linux's. However,
such a collaboration would help us to converge on One GNU System.
This would be a tangible step for the GNU/Linux community and GNU/Hurd
communities in joining forces, for the end purpose of furthering the
GNU Project's growth. (The phrase ``world domination'' has been
floating around, too.) ;)
I believe that now is exactly the right time to do this,
--
Gordon Matzigkeit <gord@fig.org> //\ I'm a FIG (http://www.fig.org/)
Free information, free yourself. \// I use GNU (http://www.gnu.org/)
Copyright (C) 1998 FIG; the creator offers you this gift and wants it to
remain free. See http://www.fig.org/freedom.html for details.
This work is copylefted and may be copied, modified and distributed
under the GNU General Public License (GPL); it comes with absolutely
NO WARRANTY. See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.
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