EXPLAIN: What is the GNU HURD?
“HURD” is an indirectly recursive acronym, standing for “HIRD of Unix-Replacing Daemons”, where “HIRD” stands for “HURD of Interfaces Representing Depth”. (Wikipedia)
What more do you need to know?
OK, ok. Stop slapping me.
I’m sure that the developers of the world will cringe at this, but I always think of the HURD as the GNU operating system kernel. This is the fateful ingredient that wasn’t ready (and still isn’t) in 1992. Linus’ kernel was, and his kernel mated with the already created GNU applications formed GNU/Linux.
Every now and again the GNU Project makes hopeful noises that the HURD will be complete soon, but to date it is not. When and if the HURD is completed, it will be the missing link to a completely GNU operating system. I suspect that it will also finally give RMS freedom from his tools being forgotten by the world at large who call GNU/Linux just “Linux”.
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3 opinions for EXPLAIN: What is the GNU HURD?
Srinivasan R
Dec 31, 2005 at 6:51 am
Though you have already pointed out, Hurd is a set of servers running on top of the Mach Microkernel.
The Mach Microkernel is ready for development use and I myself have installed GNU/Hurd(K8). But don’t use it now.
Even if the Mach Microkernel (or L4) becomes stable enough, I think it would take many years for it to be used in par with(or instead of) GNU/Linux production servers.
Jon
Dec 31, 2005 at 9:32 am
You’ve used it? Very cool.
There’s a part of me that thinks we may never see the Hurd, but every couple of years there’s more rumbling about it that makes me think it’s closer than I think. But then it never materializes…
I hope it does. I’m really interested it from a geek y point of view :)
Srinivasan R
Dec 31, 2005 at 11:34 pm
Yeah and it was nice. Really found no difference (in speed) when compared to Linux(monolithic) kernel. But maybe I didn’t stress test it.
But the design of Mach is great.
The developers didn’t add things that they found not required in a Unix system - like init.
Also one doesn’t need to login to view (world readable)files. You can just type in any command(like ls, cat, etc.) in the login prompt and it is displayed. Really cool feature.
Also instead of mounting drives, you setup translators for the drive.
GNU/Hurd is for only the geeks(at present), while GNU/Linux has reached the desktop status.
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