about GNU Hurd

[arnuld-2]

i have 2 simple questions, i see there are 2 distributions of Hurd:

1.) GNU (which is what we call the "complete GNU Operating System")
2.) Debian GNU/Hurd


Debian Hurd has ISOs available in the form of K14 and it has apt-get
as package management system which is quite good IMHO.

1st question, GNU Hurd has no ISOs. this page links to 2 GNU
snapshots: http://hurd.in/bin/view/Hurd/SetupGNU  but they are quite
old and seem unusable to the person who want to become a Hurd
developer. why there are no ISOs of GNU ?

2nd, i do not see any discussion for a package management system for
GNU Hurd, is there any ?



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[Daniel Martin-10]

On Mon, 2007-07-16 at 17:15 +0530, arnuld wrote:
> i have 2 simple questions, i see there are 2 distributions of Hurd:
>
> 1.) GNU (which is what we call the "complete GNU Operating System")
> 2.) Debian GNU/Hurd

Well strictly speaking these are not Hurd distributions they are
GNU/Hurd distributions, just as gNewSense is not a Linux distribution it
is a GNU/Linux distribution. The Hurd (+ GNUMach) is a kernel
replacement, not a full operating system.

> Debian Hurd has ISOs available in the form of K14 and it has apt-get
> as package management system which is quite good IMHO.

apt is not a package management system, similarly neither is yum.
Rather, these are programs that download packages from a repository and
pass them on to the package manager (dpkg, rpm etc..) to be installed.
It is hoped that one day there will be a program like apt or yum for the
GNU system.

> 1st question, GNU Hurd has no ISOs. this page links to 2 GNU
> snapshots: http://hurd.in/bin/view/Hurd/SetupGNU  but they are quite
> old and seem unusable to the person who want to become a Hurd
> developer. why there are no ISOs of GNU ?

There are ISO images of the most recent snapshots of GNU available at
[1]. There are official releases available on GNU FTP mirrors I believe
but these are extremely old.

> 2nd, i do not see any discussion for a package management system for
> GNU Hurd, is there any ?

This has been discussed in the past on this list I believe, have a look
through the archives. I encourage you to get involved! ;-)

 [1] http://www.update.uu.se/~ams/GNU/

Kind regards,



Daniel.



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[Daniel Martin-10]

On Mon, 2007-07-16 at 13:17 +0100, Daniel Martin wrote:
> > 1st question, GNU Hurd has no ISOs. this page links to 2 GNU
> > snapshots: http://hurd.in/bin/view/Hurd/SetupGNU  but they are quite
> > old and seem unusable to the person who want to become a Hurd
> > developer. why there are no ISOs of GNU ?

I was unable to access that site, perhaps the server is down. The latest
snapshots are from January 2006. Alfred has stated that there is
currently little point in creating a new snapshot.

> There are ISO images of the most recent snapshots of GNU available at
> [1]. There are official releases available on GNU FTP mirrors I believe
> but these are extremely old.

Sorry, I was being a fool, the snapshots there are not ISO images, but
they are the preferred (only?) way to install GNU. IMO they are easier
to install than an ISO image would be, provided that you already have
GNU/* or *BSD installed.



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[Jonathan Carter (highvoltage)]

Daniel Martin wrote:
> I was unable to access that site, perhaps the server is down. The latest
> snapshots are from January 2006. Alfred has stated that there is
> currently little point in creating a new snapshot.

Is GNU/Hurd now an abandoned project? I always hoped that it would some
day see some kind of a version 1.0 come to light. Linux is ok though,
but it seems that it's going to stay on GPLv2 for at least a while.

-Jonathan


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[Daniel Martin-10]

On Mon, 2007-07-16 at 15:26 +0200, Jonathan Carter wrote:
> Daniel Martin wrote:
> > I was unable to access that site, perhaps the server is down. The latest
> > snapshots are from January 2006. Alfred has stated that there is
> > currently little point in creating a new snapshot.
>
> Is GNU/Hurd now an abandoned project? I always hoped that it would some
> day see some kind of a version 1.0 come to light. Linux is ok though,
> but it seems that it's going to stay on GPLv2 for at least a while.

GNU/Hurd isn't abandoned, but it does need more people to work on it.
Linux has no choice but to stick with GPLv2 as they removed the `or any
later version' clause, and therefore to change the license to GPLv3
would require the consent of all the copyright holders. But to be honest
the license doesn't matter that much, as long as it is free.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.



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[arnuld-2]

> On 7/16/07, Daniel Martin <hurd@...> wrote:

> On Mon, 2007-07-16 at 15:26 +0200, Jonathan Carter wrote:
> > Daniel Martin wrote:
> > > I was unable to access that site, perhaps the server is down. The latest
> > > snapshots are from January 2006. Alfred has stated that there is
> > > currently little point in creating a new snapshot.
> >
> > Is GNU/Hurd now an abandoned project? I always hoped that it would some
> > day see some kind of a version 1.0 come to light. Linux is ok though,
> > but it seems that it's going to stay on GPLv2 for at least a while.

> GNU/Hurd isn't abandoned, but it does need more people to work on it.
> Linux has no choice but to stick with GPLv2 as they removed the `or any
> later version' clause, and therefore to change the license to GPLv3
> would require the consent of all the copyright holders. But to be honest
> the license doesn't matter that much, as long as it is free.
>
> Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.

sometimes i think there are too many people working on Fedora and too
many on Debian and other GNU/Linu distros and here Hurd lacks
manpower. i think people have forgotten their freedom.  Corporates are
a virus to society and as soon as i think of these things my belief
and will for becoming a core developer for GNU/Hurd becomes stronger.



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[Michael Banck-3]

Hi,

On Mon, Jul 16, 2007 at 03:26:54PM +0200, Jonathan Carter wrote:
> Daniel Martin wrote:
> >I was unable to access that site, perhaps the server is down. The latest
> >snapshots are from January 2006. Alfred has stated that there is
> >currently little point in creating a new snapshot.
>
> Is GNU/Hurd now an abandoned project? I always hoped that it would some
> day see some kind of a version 1.0 come to light. Linux is ok though,
> but it seems that it's going to stay on GPLv2 for at least a while.

OK, there might be some terminology issues here, not sure:

 - GNU Hurd is the GNU project's replacement for the traditional Unix
   kernel, aimed at extensibility, and giving as much freedom to its
   Users as possible.  It is closely related to (currently) GNU Mach
   (the underlying microkernel) and GNU libc (providing the GNU Hurd's
   POSIX personality for interoperation with legacy (and GNU) software)

 - GNU/Hurd (or just GNU) is the GNU project's operating
   system/distribution.  

 - Debian GNU/Hurd is the Debian project's version of the GNU operating
   system (or a GNU/Hurd distribution, if you like).

There have been 0.1 and 0.2 releases of both the GNU Hurd and GNU in the
mid 90s, no futher releases have been made except for a couple of
development snapshots of the GNU system done by ams around end-2005
beginning of 2006.  While the GNU system development seems to have
slowed down somewhat over the last year (and was totally dormant between
mid-90s and mid-00s), development on the GNU Hurd (and GNU Mach and of
course GNU libc) is being continued.  That development is independent of
the GNU system though, and is being discussed/coordinated at
bug-hurd@... and not on this list.  Debian GNU/Hurd is also actively
developped and discussed/coordinated at debian-hurd@....
No proper release of Debian GNU/Hurd exists until today, but more or
less stable snapshots together with an installer are made available as
ISO images from time to time.

To get back to your question; neither GNU Hurd nor GNU/Hurd are
abandoned projects, but the latter is currently less visibly developped
(I am no insider, so cannot comment on any private hacking going on
behind the curtains).


cheers,

Michael


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[Michael Banck]

On Mon, Jul 16, 2007 at 07:12:11PM +0530, arnuld wrote:
> sometimes i think there are too many people working on Fedora and too
> many on Debian and other GNU/Linu distros and here Hurd lacks
> manpower. i think people have forgotten their freedom.  Corporates are
> a virus to society and as soon as i think of these things my belief
> and will for becoming a core developer for GNU/Hurd becomes stronger.

Neither Fedora nor Debian are `companies'; Fedora is merely heavily
sponsored by RedHat, but becoming more and more independent.  Debian
never was and never will be a company or get heavily sponsored by one.

Feel free to put your energy whereever you want, but please respect
other Free Software projects along the way.  


Michael

--
"No other topic of discussion in our circles has matched even a fraction
of the gravity and profundity of this observation.  I appreciate it
greatly."
                -- Roland McGrath


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[Jonathan Carter (highvoltage)]

Hi Michael

Michael Banck wrote:

> There have been 0.1 and 0.2 releases of both the GNU Hurd and GNU in the
> mid 90s, no futher releases have been made except for a couple of
> development snapshots of the GNU system done by ams around end-2005
> beginning of 2006.  While the GNU system development seems to have
> slowed down somewhat over the last year (and was totally dormant between
> mid-90s and mid-00s), development on the GNU Hurd (and GNU Mach and of
> course GNU libc) is being continued.  That development is independent of
> the GNU system though, and is being discussed/coordinated at
> bug-hurd@... and not on this list.  Debian GNU/Hurd is also actively
> developped and discussed/coordinated at debian-hurd@....
> No proper release of Debian GNU/Hurd exists until today, but more or
> less stable snapshots together with an installer are made available as
> ISO images from time to time.
>
> To get back to your question; neither GNU Hurd nor GNU/Hurd are
> abandoned projects, but the latter is currently less visibly developped
> (I am no insider, so cannot comment on any private hacking going on
> behind the curtains).

Thank you Michael, that explains my question perfectly. I'm more
interested in the GNU/Hurd progress itself than the Debian GNU/Hurd
progress. I'll join both lists and stay up to date.

thanks!
Jonathan


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[arnuld-2]

> On 7/16/07, Michael Banck <mbanck@...> wrote:

> Neither Fedora nor Debian are `companies'; Fedora is merely heavily
> sponsored by RedHat, but becoming more and more independent.  Debian
> never was and never will be a company or get heavily sponsored by one.

> Feel free to put your energy whereever you want, but please respect
> other Free Software projects along the way.

hey.. Michael.... i did not say those are companies....aaarrgh.... i
think my words overlapped there. i clear this illusion here:

1.)  "sometimes i think there are too many people working on Fedora
and too many on Debian and other GNU/Linu distros and here Hurd lacks
manpower. i think people have forgotten their freedom"

2.) "Corporates are a virus to society"

these 2 are different and unrelated to each other. in (2) by
corporates i mean companies like Sun, IBM, Java and all of those big
MNCs and small non-MNCs who create proprietary softwares. i do not
target Microsoft  or any single company because root cause of the
trouble is proprietary mentality which is shared by more than 97% of
the corporate.

by (1) i mean too many people are working on other distros, maintaing
them and spending their energy and time on them, including maintaining
non-free packages like Skype, Sun-JRE, unrar etc. while that time
could be spent on writing Hurd translators, a Hurd installer and a
package system for GNU or some other trivial but important work for
GNU Project but they do not.

so you see i attacked 2 very different and unrelated aspects and i
explained them in context to one aspect "Hurd lacks manpower".

i really overlapped these 2 earlier .. i apologize bothering you :-|


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[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   While the GNU system development seems to have slowed down somewhat
   over the last year (and was totally dormant between mid-90s and
   mid-00s),

The reason why there have not been any new snapshots, is because the
development of the Hurd has slowed down since the last snapshot was
made.  Just recompiling things for the sake of recompiling is not a
useful way to manage resources.  The Hurd has not had any noticible
development since the last snapshot, GCC is still broken, and glibc
does not work.  Nobody has sadly done anything to fix these problems.
Would you like to fix these problems?  If they can be fixed, then we
can make a new snapshot.  Then there are many more issues to be
solved.  


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[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > > 1st question, GNU Hurd has no ISOs. this page links to 2 GNU
   > > snapshots: http://hurd.in/bin/view/Hurd/SetupGNU but they are
   > > quite old and seem unusable to the person who want to become a
   > > Hurd developer. why there are no ISOs of GNU ?

Well, the reports I have had is that the GNU snapshots are much much
easier to install for a new user than Debian GNU/Hurd.  YMMV.

   I was unable to access that site, perhaps the server is down. The latest
   snapshots are from January 2006. Alfred has stated that there is
   currently little point in creating a new snapshot.

Correct, not much has happened in surrounding projects to warrant a
new snapshot.


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[Richard Stallman]

    Linux has no choice but to stick with GPLv2 as they removed the `or any
    later version' clause, and therefore to change the license to GPLv3
    would require the consent of all the copyright holders. But to be honest
    the license doesn't matter that much, as long as it is free.

Our lawyers think that they can relicense Linux if they want to.
It is important to do this, to protect the users from tivoization.


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[arnuld-2]

> On 7/17/07, Alfred M. Szmidt <ams@...> wrote:

> The reason why there have not been any new snapshots, is because the
> development of the Hurd has slowed down since the last snapshot was
> made.  Just recompiling things for the sake of recompiling is not a
> useful way to manage resources.  The Hurd has not had any noticible
> development since the last snapshot, GCC is still broken, and glibc
> does not work.  Nobody has sadly done anything to fix these problems.
> Would you like to fix these problems?

i am a newbie to programming, learning C++ ATM, don't know any other
language. how can i help in fixing these problems ?



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[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > The reason why there have not been any new snapshots, is because
   > the development of the Hurd has slowed down since the last
   > snapshot was made.  Just recompiling things for the sake of
   > recompiling is not a useful way to manage resources.  The Hurd
   > has not had any noticible development since the last snapshot,
   > GCC is still broken, and glibc does not work.  Nobody has sadly
   > done anything to fix these problems.  Would you like to fix these
   > problems?

   i am a newbie to programming, learning C++ ATM, don't know any other
   language. how can i help in fixing these problems ?

Lots of happy hacking is what will fix these problems!


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[Richard Stallman]

    i am a newbie to programming, learning C++ ATM, don't know any other
    language. how can i help in fixing these problems ?

Alas, I don't think a newbie can help much in this area.
This is not easy programming.


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[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

On Mon, Jul 16, 2007 at 10:18:46PM +0200, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:

> The reason why there have not been any new snapshots, is because the
> development of the Hurd has slowed down since the last snapshot was
> made.  Just recompiling things for the sake of recompiling is not a
> useful way to manage resources.  The Hurd has not had any noticible
> development since the last snapshot,

I know Alfread doesn't agree on this, but I must say that I see a pretty
different picture. There actually have been quite considerable
improvments in stability and software compatibility.

It's true that many of these improvements didn't make it to the official
repositories, due to hostility of the glibc maintainer and often lacking
responsiveness of the Hurd maintainer(s). Nevertheless, all the patches
can be found on the the patch tracker and/or mailing list, as well as in
the Debian packages.

> GCC is still broken, and glibc does not work.

Barring the aforementioned upstream caveat: GCC 4.1 actually works
except for gcj; 4.2 is also supposed to work. Don't know about trunk or
4.3.

Glibc 2.5 works (now even with TLS), though trunk and 2.6 do not.

> Nobody has sadly done anything to fix these problems.

This is a very unfair statement, dismissing a considerable amount of
work done by Barry deFreese, Samuel Thibault, Thomas Schwinge, Aurelien
Jarno, and maybe others on glibc alone.

-antrik-


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[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > The reason why there have not been any new snapshots, is because
   > the development of the Hurd has slowed down since the last
   > snapshot was made.  Just recompiling things for the sake of
   > recompiling is not a useful way to manage resources.  The Hurd
   > has not had any noticible development since the last snapshot,

   I know Alfread doesn't agree on this, but I must say that I see a
   pretty different picture. There actually have been quite
   considerable improvments in stability and software compatibility.

The stability problems in Debian GNU/Hurd were due to a buggy
tool-chain on Debian's side, it was easily rectified by recompiling
things.  None of the patches touched stability issues; infact, almost
all of the patches have been cosmetic changes.

And the glibc maintainers have been far easier to deal with than the
Hurd maintainers; which is quite funny...


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[Richard Stallman]

I have asked the Glibc maintainers to facilitate installation of
the necessary Glibc changes.

Maybe we need to add another Hurd maintainer who will devote
more time to this.  Is there someone who would like to volunteer?


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[arnuld-2]

> On 7/21/07, Richard Stallman <rms@...> wrote:

>>> I have asked the Glibc maintainers to facilitate installation of
>>> the necessary Glibc changes.

> Maybe we need to add another Hurd maintainer who will devote
> more time to this.  Is there someone who would like to volunteer?

i wish i could be the 1st candidate to take that responsibility and
unfortunately i am a newbie, learning C++ ATM (as i posted earlier on
this mailing list)

thanks anyway

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