newbie

["Ben Stevens" <sennomo@member.fsf.org>]

Hello.

I'm new to the hurd.  I'm impressed with how much I can do with it.  Here are a few things off the top of my head.  I'm sure most of them can probably be answered with an "RTFM!" and a URL.

I'm confused about the debate about cross-installing.  (I admit, I just joined the list a couple of days ago, so I didn't catch the beginning.)  Less than a week ago, knowing almost nothing about hurd, I found Neal's guide, followed it, and had no problem cross-installing.  (What's not supposed to work?)

Is there a reliable implementation of /dev/random out there?  And if so, why wasn't it packaged with the hurd?  (I confess that what information I found online about it confused more than informed me.)

I've downloaded a few 3rd-party sources and during compilation, I notice that the C source files don't match the header files in /include/hurd.  (One or two formal arguments don't match in a handful of functions.)  What causes this discrepancy?  Is this an ongoing problem?  (Put another way, do the hurd header files keep changing?  If I ever take a crack at developing any system stuff, I would want to be aware.)

Is there a way to create and to access virtual terminals at boot time?  I miss pressing Ctrl+Alt+F2 like with linux, and I'm tired of having to hit the reset button when my shell hangs (since I can't enter another shell to kill the offending process).  The only "workaround" I have found is to enter X (which doesn't quite cut it).

I'm looking forward to using hurd and exploring the possibilities of an open-source microkernel system.  I'll appreciate any help I get.

--Ben