GNU Hurd Has Been Making Progress On Its x86_64 Support

[Weasel]

I'm a software engineer, burned out (health wise) from my job. I've come to realize that I've turned what I love into my work and in recent years the fun was gone. I've not been able to enjoy programming ever since.

I love seeing projects like this, without much chance of reaching a wider audience, continuing to make progress. It means that there are people who do this out of a sense of passion ... and that's the healthiest motivation to do any kind of work.

I hope I'll find back my passion eventually... and I'll think more than thrice before considering turning my hobby into my job again.

Sadly it pays a lot and that's a pretty important decision in life unfortunately.

[guglovich]

Perhaps this is our future hope given what Open Source is doing.

[ppcorp]

I wounder if it would be possible to ship Debian with the redox kernel

I was wondering that same thing myself. However, Redox is focused on delivering a Rust centeric environment

[woife]

I've had horrible comments sent to me like this via email and social media before about my work. It's absolutely insane how entitled people feel about open-source software that they think they can dictate how others spend their free time.

I had similar experiences ... After finishing my thesis I open sourced the software that I had written. My intention was to provide people with similar research interests with something to start, so that they don't have to waste time with the same basic challenges but can spend their project time taking that research a step further.
But some of the mails I received were like "You have to implement this and that because I need that urgently".

[andyprough]

Omg, how did this happen?

birdie was shot down in his prime by all-powerful forces. Like Icarus, he flew too close to the sun. He challenged the gods for supremacy, and so they had to destroy him.

[plandream]

I don't quite understand all this sudden appreciation for something so persistently, utterly useless.

All these people, for all these decades could've done something that actually helps people. Instead, they've been doing this. A pipe dream, that will never be used for anything, by anyone. At best, you could call it l'art pour l'art, but I'm really having a hard time understanding how a software engineer could be motivated to look at things in such a way. What's the point of engineering if it serves absolutely no purpose at all? How is that fulfilling? I just don't get it. At all.

When all these people eventually die, will someone ever say, "Remember Hurd? It was so great!". Nope. No one will care. Isn't that like the saddest way to waste your life? Life is too short for this kind of cr@p.

It is their time, they can do what they want with it.

Hurd is a lifelong project, aiming for a GNU/GNU implementation.

It is way more important than people think: it's another, completely FOSS kernel, on unix (edit:not linux, it was mobile autocorrect) philosophy and it is a good thing to have.

It actually helps other projects as well, there are plenty bugs that are revealed in hurd that help linux as well.

[vladpetric]

I don't quite understand all this sudden appreciation for something so persistently, utterly useless.

All these people, for all these decades could've done something that actually helps people. Instead, they've been doing this. A pipe dream, that will never be used for anything, by anyone. At best, you could call it l'art pour l'art, but I'm really having a hard time understanding how a software engineer could be motivated to look at things in such a way. What's the point of engineering if it serves absolutely no purpose at all? How is that fulfilling? I just don't get it. At all.

When all these people eventually die, will someone ever say, "Remember Hurd? It was so great!". Nope. No one will care. Isn't that like the saddest way to waste your life? Life is too short for this kind of cr@p.

I don't mean to attack these folks and I agree with you, but I can say that people literally get high on ideas, convert them into dreams/lifelong passions, and then just stick with them.

[coder]

After finishing my thesis I open sourced the software that I had written. My intention was to provide people with similar research interests with something to start, so that they don't have to waste time with the same basic challenges but can spend their project time taking that research a step further.
But some of the mails I received were like "You have to implement this and that because I need that urgently".

Unless you really don't have the time, you could just reply back and ask whether they have funding and how much they'd be willing to pay for those features. The best part is that you could still insist on upstreaming the work, like Cygnus did, back in the day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_Solutions

[Laughing1]

Don't hold your breath for Hurd 1.0

[Laughing1]

risc-v when?