sizes of Hurd on Mach vs. Linux

[Gordon Matzigkeit <gord@fig.org>]

Hi!

This might be useful for the FAQ:

 > Anyway, how big is Mach now, and how big is the Hurd "kernel" (I
 > guess I should be using a plural there?)

[Steven: The question comes out of discussing the potential for Linux
gradually to become a microkernel that the Hurd would run on top of.
If you add it to the FAQ, please give the context so that it doesn't
come across as a troll.]

It depends which parts you count.  It's hard to compare directly with
Linux unless you know the exact ratio of hardware device drivers to
kernel features.  Here's the raw source code size counts:

trick$ du -sk *
10757	gnumach-1.1.3
7114	hurd-19980716
27688	linux-2.0.34
trick$

Now let me separate Linux into drivers and kernel, as well as getting
rid of the non-i386 code, documentation, and user utility portions of
the Hurd and Mach distributions:

trick$ mv linux-2.0.34/drivers linux-2.0.34-drivers
trick$ rm -rf linux-2.0.34/Documentation
trick$ rm -rf linux-2.0.34/{arch/,include/asm-}{alpha,m68k,ppc,mips,sparc}
trick$ mv linux-2.0.34 linux-2.0.34-kernel
trick$ rm -rf hurd-19980716/{benchmarks,boot,bsdfsck,config,daemons,doc,\
	fstests,login,mkbootfs,mount,nfsd,release,storeio,sutils,ufs-fsck,\
	ufs-utils,utils}
trick$ rm -rf gnumach-1.1.3/mig
trick$ du -sk *
10366	gnumach-1.1.3
5837	hurd-19980716
6948	linux-2.0.34-kernel
14460	linux-2.0.34-drivers
trick$ 

Obviously, these figures can't be directly compared, because Linux
doesn't have the same features as the Hurd running on Mach.  There is
a lot of overlap, but Linux supports more device drivers, Mach has
abstractions like memory objects, and the Hurd has cool filesystems
like ftpfs and usermux.

It's interesting to compare all these figures to linux-1.0, which was
released about the same time that the FSF came out with the first
viable Hurd snapshot:

trick$ du -sk linux-1.0
5041	linux-1.0
trick$ mv linux-1.0/drivers linux-1.0-drivers
trick$ mv linux-1.0 linux-1.0-kernel
trick$ du -sk linux-1.0*
2573	linux-1.0-drivers
2468	linux-1.0-kernel
trick$

-- 
 Gordon Matzigkeit <gord@fig.org> //\ I'm a FIG (http://www.fig.org/)
    Lovers of freedom, unite!     \// I use GNU (http://www.gnu.org/)

Copyright (C) 1998 FIG; the creator offers you this gift and wants it to
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