GNU/Hurd Plans For A Future With USB, SATA, 64-Bit

[frign]

What the hell are you up to?

"all over the place", come on.. Those were just my 2 cents.

I may appreciate the efforts of the Hurd developers. But, as BO$$ meant, an operating system which, on modern computers, won't work properly (no USB=No keyboard, mouse or thumbdrives) or install (no SATA= no hard disk install, not even booting from a modern DVD drive) is useless. And spending 23 years on a purposeless software is throwing your life away.

It looks like a group of engineers who share the dream of developing the most advanced steam engine in the world start working, their idea does not attract many people but they go straight on with it anyway, and after a couple of centuries they come out with a barely working steamer which "with still some, uh, loads of adjustments, fixing and developing it might work on some 1800's coaches" while the world all around them is traveling on hybrid-powered cars, jet airplanes, electric hi-speed trains and coming-soon maglev tracks.

Nope, this analogy is wrong.

Contrary to the comparison of steam-machines and hybrid-cars, high-speed-trains and coming-up maglev-tracks, the requirements for a Kernel haven't changed that rapidly over the years.
Granted, the Hurd needs more suppport for standards like SATA and USB, no question, but unless you are a kid like BO$$, focusing on the *direct* practicability of a Kernel, the advantages of the Hurd are clear:
BO$$ doesn't understand what translators are, so his points are ultimatively rendered invalid, as he does not know how the Hurd works in any way. He might be only able to think in the scope of a person just interested to play games, use proprietary software and benchmarking his system, not taking in regard the Hurd-codebase is not as well-optimized as the Linux's one.

The reason it takes so long for the Hurd-developers to implement USB, SATA and all this other fancy stuff we seemingly cannot live without today is the fact, that they attempt to implement it in a way it suits the design-specification.
No matter how well the Linux-Kernel works, it suffers from many horrible and lousy design-decisions which hinder the actual implementation of new features and standards, which are in many ways completely different from past implementations of old standards.
Aiming to be compatible with many more situations than what the Linux-Kernel could ever offer, we now may have a quite featureless Hurd, but hell, considering what has been implemented, it bloody works without lousy workarounds (cf. FUSE, which is an abomination to human kind).

You might ask: Why don't they start implementing the new features now? I answer: Why should they do it now?
No one really urges them to do it. If you have read into the topic, you would understand, that GNU-developers never really see the urge to follow corporate-demands (unless corporations and individuals pay them), but to design something which in itself is not faulty and prone to implementations of a rushed kind.

Run the Hurd in QEMU and use it for a while; you will eventually see what I mean, even if you might not agree with or understand what I mean presently.

[Pickup]

Now looking at the Hurd, it is amazing how much these guys achieved with their relatively limited manpower. Stop complaining and start constructive work, though I am sure you will never reach the efficiency of the Hurd-developers unless you stop trolling all over the place.

"all over the place", come on.. Those were just my 2 cents.

I may appreciate the efforts of the Hurd developers. But, as BO$$ meant, an operating system which, on modern computers, won't work properly (no USB=No keyboard, mouse or thumbdrives) or install (no SATA= no hard disk install, not even booting from a modern DVD drive) is useless. And spending 23 years on a purposeless software is throwing your life away.

It looks like a group of engineers who share the dream of developing the most advanced steam engine in the world start working, their idea does not attract many people but they go straight on with it anyway, and after a couple of centuries they come out with a barely working steamer which "with still some, uh, loads of adjustments, fixing and developing it might work on some 1800's coaches" while the world all around them is traveling on hybrid-powered cars, jet airplanes, electric hi-speed trains and coming-soon maglev tracks.

[systemd rulez]

hurd is turd! Chant with me.

hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
Hurd is turd!
....

[rvalles]

You insult Windows 98: at least it supported USB and audio devices, and SATA could be made to work to some extent. :P

OTOH, remember it's their time they're wasting, not mine or yours. Just like the fact that I don't play any computer games does not mean that I have a right to criticize your choice to work on those instead of Firefox or FreeCAD.

BTW: minix has 2/4 done: SATA and audio; usb and amd64 are TODO.

Via ddekit, usb actually works just fine on minix3. That's basically just running linux's usb code inside a minix driver.

[Ibidem]

Stop with the bullshit! GNU Hurd is useless. No one uses it! Hell it even still has memory leaks so it needs a reboot every once in a while. It's at the level of windows 98. The fact that is still in development just shows how many programmers are completely out of touch with reality. Why would you work on something that is a clear dead end?

All those devs would get better recognition and contribute better to the world if they would work on linux. But noooo, linux has blobs which are evil! So we must reinvent the wheel, worse, reinvent the square wheel, and say it's better since you can cd instead of use fuse. WTF? I cd into my ntfs dirs no problem whatsoever. If that is the Hurd advantage then I will continue laughing at that POS. It's not even positioned in the market. What need does it try to solve? Nothing. Just a random bunch of idealists building their kernel thinking they are some superior hotshot programmers just because they are different. HURD IS TURD! Chant with me.

You insult Windows 98: at least it supported USB and audio devices, and SATA could be made to work to some extent. :P

OTOH, remember it's their time they're wasting, not mine or yours. Just like the fact that I don't play any computer games does not mean that I have a right to criticize your choice to work on those instead of Firefox or FreeCAD.

BTW: minix has 2/4 done: SATA and audio; usb and amd64 are TODO.

[Delgarde]

Now looking at the Hurd, it is amazing how much these guys achieved with their relatively limited manpower.

While true, the point still stands. Hurd might be a fun project for developers to hack on, but it's hard to see it having a future as anything more than a toy for those developers. Not if they've got so few people that both SATA and USB are still on the todo list... we're talking about something that will never boot outside of a VM or on hardware old enough to still support ps/2 ports and PATA drives...

[Nobu]

@BO$$:

Sometimes people like to learn, instead of working all the time. Sometimes learning involves looking at stuff that isn't necessarily main-stream, is different from other things, may not be fully functional or complete, and may never be in wide-spread use. This kind of learning can often lead to new and fresh ideas.

And trust me, working on a big project, like Linux, can often feel like work. And not every hobbyist developer likes to come home from work...to more work. Especially if it's a project they're unfamiliar with the internals of.

[frign]

Lack of USB support?
No SATA drives??
32-bit only???

in 2013?!?!?

Does RMS know PCs got 64-bits 10 years ago, USB is the standard to connect everything, PATA drives are out of sale in most of store and SSD are all SATA or USB?

I am glad you found out how to scale text in this forum.
Nevertheless, getting back to topic, I completely understand your point, but have to note here, that RMS is not directly involved into the development. He is just the one having worked on the specification of the Hurd.
SATA, USB and 64Bit might be standard nowadays, but moving the Linux Kernel to this point was only possible with thousands and thousands of active users and many corporations supporting the development.
Now looking at the Hurd, it is amazing how much these guys achieved with their relatively limited manpower. Stop complaining and start constructive work, though I am sure you will never reach the efficiency of the Hurd-developers unless you stop trolling all over the place.

[Pickup]

Lack of USB support?
No SATA drives??
32-bit only???

in 2013?!?!?

Does RMS know PCs got 64-bits 10 years ago, USB is the standard to connect everything, PATA drives are out of sale in most of store and SSD are all SATA or USB?

[Cyborg16]

With Linux turning more and more popular, it could definitely use its power someday to force the manufacturers into releasing free drivers (we shouldn't do this too early or else we would risk patch-forks).

Possibly, but that's still a little way off. Currently I have both NVIDIA and AMD graphics driver blobs installed (one installation, runs on two different machines), so call me short-sighted, but if I use linux I want to use a system that works decently.

Though I agree that it would be best if they also released hardware documentation and either did not depend on firmware blobs or provided sources for them.

And actually tested their code against to the specification.