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Re: /home/user/var ?



On Sat, May 20, 2000 at 12:02:15AM +0100, Adam Sampson wrote:
> 
> This is just one example; I'm sure there are plenty of other features in
> "forgotten" OSs which would be useful to us. So, essentially, my plea is
> that if you've got any information about interesting (or not-so-interesting)
> things in other OSs, then try to make it available to others to pick ideas
> from.

Well, of course there are more facettes to it than just lack of ideas (or
"forgotten lore" :). Quite convincing arguments can be derived from the
amount of existing code base and developer knowledge. If you have a cool OS
but no software to run on it, and no developers who have the time to learn
doing things the new way, the success becomes less likely.

This is why the Hurd is so cool and different! It enables evryone to work in
a common environment (POSIX), but *also* to extent/overwite/modify the pieces he
wants. This is only(?) possible in a multi-server environment.

In other words: There is nothing in the Hurd that stops you from
implementing your supercool filesystem server, or user management server,
etc, and plug it into the Hurd. And we would very much like to see that
happen.

The Hurd as it is is the "default Hurd appearance", as a POSIX compatible
operating system with some extras. I think nobody will deny that this is
an excellent choice as a ground base. From here everyone can go in different
directions. You don't need to convince the Hurd developers that it is a
good idea. You don't need to try to get them to do it for you. That's the
Hurd we are talking about after all.

Thanks,
Marcus

-- 
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' Debian http://www.debian.org Check Key server 
Marcus Brinkmann              GNU    http://www.gnu.org    for public PGP Key 
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de,     marcus@gnu.org    PGP Key ID 36E7CD09
http://homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Marcus.Brinkmann/       brinkmd@debian.org



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