Re: Sparc port?
>>>>> Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS writes:
>> There is no sparc port of the Hurd. The first thing required is a
>> sparc port of GNUmach.
EGE> What about the old plan of porting the Hurd to Linux as a
EGE> microkernel? What are the relative costs and benefits of
EGE> porting the Hurd to Linux, and porting GNUmach to other
EGE> architectures?
Thomas and Roland thought this was nearly completely insane, but I did
look at this more seriously.
After a couple of days of thinking and investigation, I have to say
that I agree with their conclusions. The work that it would take to
add the necessary features to Linux would be much better spent porting
existing Linux drivers to GNU Mach, and working on libc binary
compatibility.
If you really want to work on another kernel besides Mach,
investigating Fiasco (free L4, http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/fiasco/)
would be a better idea. If we're going to make a serious effort to
port to a new microkernel, why not pick one that will give us better
performance?
Grabbing existing Linux features sounds like a nice idea, but frankly,
I'm shocked at how quickly people like OKUJI Yoshinori and friends are
improving GNU Mach. As Thomas put it, Mach and the Hurd is basically
reusing most of the Linux kernel code, it's just organized a bit
differently. ;)
So, that's my opinion: I used to be for the idea of using Linux as a
microkernel, but now I have a much greater love for Mach. Kinda like
how I used to be for using Red Hat as a distribution, but now I can't
live without Debian. :)
[BTW, part of my reasoning stems from a discussion I had with a
certain top-ranked Linux kernel developer who made it clear that,
though he/she wouldn't wish death on anybody, microkernel features
would probably never make it into the official Linux distribution,
especially if they were only useful to the Hurd, so we'd have to
develop our own fork.]
--
Gordon Matzigkeit <gord@fig.org> //\ I'm a FIG (http://www.fig.org/)
Committed to freedom and diversity \// I use GNU (http://www.gnu.org/)
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