(Slashdot) Dr. Dobbs' Journal On Hurd + top comments Re: Avoid Hurd
Dr. Dobbs' Journal On Hurd
Posted by Hemos
on Wednesday November 01, @08:23AM
from the getting-some-attention-at-least dept.
URL: http://slashdot.org/articles/00/11/01/1326225.shtml
wiredog pointed out an article that's currently
running in Dr. Dobbs that talks about Hurd,
[http://www.ddj.com/articles/2000/0012/0012a/0012a.htm]
what it is, and what it is meant to do, as well
as what's cool about it. The article starts off
slow, but then gets into some good info.
Top comments moderator scored 4 or 5 Re: Avoid the Hurd...
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**** Avoid the HURD (Score:4, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 01, @08:37AM EST (#10)
The HURD is an ambitious project which has had a rocky history,
but there remains several black marks against it which seem to me
to be fundamental flaws which are inherent to what it is and what
it wants to do.
Firstly there is the fact that it is based upon an implementation
of the Mach microkernel, which has been the favourite of OS
courses but which has been shown to be rediculously inefficient in
real world situations where performance rather than elegence is a
major factor. You need to have a fast kernel in any case, and Mach
just can't cut it. If the HURD is to succeed it needs to move onto
using a more serious architecture rather than some ivory tower toy
kernel.
Secondly, the current implementation of its server system is prone
to an inordinate amount of deadlocks and race conditions under
heavy loads, partly due to the Mach kernel, partly due to some
sloppy coding in some of the IPC code. This means that whilst the
HURD is fine for the casual home user, under heavy loads (such as
running a webserver), you are likely to get a lot of system lag or
even freezing.
Until these serious flaws are sorted out, the HURD is still in the
"hobbyist" category rather than the "real world" one. It's nice to
study, but it needs to have a lot more work before it's ready for
heavy use.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
**** Re:Avoid the HURD (Score:4, Interesting)
by hey! (mattleo@treehouse.acrcorp.com) on Wednesday November
01, @09:52AM EST (#71)
(User #33014 Info)
Isn't Apple's OS X Server based on Mach 2.5?
I haven't heard of any major problems with it.
-Matt
---- It's bad luck to be superstitious.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
***** Re:Avoid the HURD (Score:5, Informative)
by alangmead on Wednesday November 01, @11:24AM EST
(#146)
(User #109702 Info)
There are two major differences between OS X and the
Hurd.
The first difference is that OS X is a single server and
the Hurd is a multi-server. That is, on OS X all the Mach
stuff communicates with is one large Free-BSD kernel with
its hardware dependent stuff ripped out. The Hurd on the
other hand has each system call handled by a separate
thread of execution.
The second difference is that Apple moved the BSD kernel
into the same kernel space as the Mach microkernel. This
means that they don't have the context switching overhead
that traditional Mach based systems have.
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**** Hurd, how many years in development? (Score:4, Interesting)
by DamnYankee (jim@mi4e.com) on Wednesday November 01, @08:38AM
EST (#11)
(User #18417 Info) http://www.mi4e.com
When I first heard of HURD back in, what, 1992 or 1993, I thought
it sounded like a great idea. But now it's the better part of a
decade later and the thing still isn't out of ALHPA testing!
I'll stick with Linux, thanks...
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said, "I
drank what?"
(Val Kilmer in the movie Real Genius)
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**** Oh spare us the LINUX evangelism (Score:4, Insightful)
by MonkeyMagic on Wednesday November 01, @08:59AM EST (#27)
(User #118319 Info)
Linux demonstrated years ago the Monoliths work. MS showed
Microkernels don't.
Care to elaborate? Actually there was nothing wrong with the NT
microkernel design originally. 3.51 was fast and I believe fairly
stable. As far as I can tell the instability came from the UI
which has been allowed to contaminate the architecture.
Linux has indeed shown that Monolithic kernels can work well, but
there are too many who believe that Linux is the peak of OS design
and that it can't be beat, so what's the point in even trying?.
Well in n number of years, we'll all be talking on kuro5hin about
the days when Linux was a really good OS for the hardware of it's
day and wasn't slashdot great before IBM bought VA. In other words
don't stop looking just because what you've got works.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained
by stupidity.
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**** Obviously no understanding of project plans... (Score:4,
Insightful)
by Christopher B. Brown (cbbrowne@hex.net) on Wednesday November
01, @10:10AM EST (#92)
(User #1267 Info) http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html
At the time that Hurd efforts started...
* Mach looked to be the "way of the future."
It wasn't until Microsoft pulled Raschid and other critical
researchers out of CMU, and IBM's WorkPlaceOS project failed
that the "glow" came off.
* Linux was still just a "hack" for the 80386.
At present, Hurd only runs on IA-32, but that hearkens back to
the "immense aura of failure" surrounding Mach. Mach has only
seen limited maintenance over the last few year.
* As for the "inappropriate ordering," be vastly aware that in
order to make a kernel self-hostable, you need to have the
whole toolchain including compilers, init , BinUtils,
FileUtils, and such.
If you have no compiler and no other such tools, you can't
build the kernel, you can't run the kernel, you can't use the
kernel.
No, they got the order straight.
The problem isn't with RMS trying to steal the glory from Linus
for building a kernel; it's not with Linus stealing the glory from
RMS when he built a kernel using the tools RMS helped build.
The problem is with the ingrates down the line that don't give
credit where it's due.
It is fair to say that just about everything at the layer sitting
on top of the Linux kernel "comes from GNU." Between GLIBC
(whether version 1 or 2), GCC, and BINUTILS, the layers that make
Linux useful all do come from FSF efforts. It certainly does look
less than graceful when RMS "demands credit;" that doesn't mean
it's an outrageous state of affairs for him to think he can expect
some credit.
And the notion that Hurd is the all important be-all end-all
project of the FSF is pretty silly; the people that want to
participate are participating, and it is not evident that the FSF
is spending big bucks or otherwise big efforts into its
development...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the
precipitate.
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