Re: about GNU Hurd

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

On Wed, Sep 05, 2007 at 09:10:13PM -0600, Michael Heath wrote:

> It's understandable that the issues here and how to fix them are so
> complex and tedious that there are not any clear answers yet. What I
> was mainly saying, however, in my previous e-mails is that very little
> real progress can be made until we find such answers, because the
> current problems both directly limit progress and limit interest in
> the project.

No, they do not. The fundamental issues with Mach are *not* the reason
why we are stuck with drivers from Linux 2.0. They are *not* the reason
why all disk I/O is like ten times slower due to lack of optimization.
(They are responsible for bad performance in *some* areas, but not the
bulk of it.) They are *not* the reason why we have no sound support, no
USB support, no SATA support etc. And they are *not* the reason why
nobody bothered to write software that allows making use of Hurd's
interesting features. They are not the reason for any of the major
problems of the current Hurd implementation.

All of these things can and should be fixed within the current
implementation. None of these things will get magically fixed by an
improved design that might come up some day. This is not a matter of
perfect design; this is a matter of actually doing the grunt work.

> I'm going to disagree with you on your statement that nothing useful
> can be done on new work or research except for those few who are
> intimately familiar with the current internal workings of Mach and the
> Hurd. There is ALWAYS lots of helpful work that people of various
> talents can do to help a project.

Like what?

There *are* endless things that people can do to help the Hurd though:
By working on the current implementation. (Coding, mentoring, porting
packages, testing, documenting, communicating to the outside,
managing...)

But none of this is in demand for Marcus' research work. Really, I can't
think of anything that people could do -- unless they have a very good
understanding of the Hurd and/or of microkernel design -- to help his
efforts at the present stage.

And to be honest, I don't see why most people would even want to. To
advance the Hurd, it's so much more important to help fixing the
pressing issues in the existing implementation... Give people something
that they can actually use, instead of dwelling on the prospect of an
even more advanced architecture.

-antrik-