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Phoronix reports that version 0.6 of GNU Hurd has been released. Before getting too excited about GNU Hurd, it's still bound to x86 32-bit and doesn't offer any compelling new features.
GNU Hurd 0.6 has "numerous cleanups and stylistic fixes" to the code-base, the message dispatching code in Hurd servers is now better, there's support for protected payloads of GNU March 1.5+, libz/libz2 are used as the decompressors to replace gz/bz2, the native fakeroot has improved, the performance of the integer hashing library has improved, and the init server has been split into the start-up server and a SysVinit-style program. The procfs and random translators were also merged.
More details on the new GNU Hurd release can be found via the 0.6 release announcement issued by Thomas Schwinge.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mtrycz on Friday April 17 2015, @05:40PM
I for one am actually pleased with the perseverance of certain initiatives, like Hurd or Minix.
There is no harm really in having more, so people that go GNU bashing are really just bitter dicks. If it doesn't work for you now, doesn't mean that it doesn't work for anyone, or that it can't work in the future. Also, GNU has done just so much for the comunity at large that goes often forgotten that it's straight silly.
Godspeed.
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(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday April 17 2015, @07:58PM
There is no harm really in having more,
But isn't this an experiment that has long outlived any possible usefulness? A hobby akin to building sailing ships with match sticks in glass bottles?
Does anybody or anything use these OSes?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by turgid on Friday April 17 2015, @08:15PM
And what is wrong with doing an interesting hobby?
I have some pointless hobby projects too that are 15-20 years behind the times and never get finished (and never will at this rate) but I find them educational and good mental exercise.
You should see my home-made vector font rendering engine that runs on SDL 1.2... :-) Actually, no you shouldn't.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mmcmonster on Saturday April 18 2015, @12:29AM
The answer is Critical Mass...
Not in the number of individuals using the OS or even developers per se. But once an OS is able to bootstrap itself on modern hardware and run enough hardware drivers so that a desktop can be compiled, then you've made it.
That being said, it's taking a long time for HURD to come along. Long enough that the initial developers could have mated, had children, have them grow up and learn programming, have them help develop the OS, and have them mate and have more kids. :-(
Still, can't wait until they port KDE over. :-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @12:47AM
I think it's still worthwhile to examine different approaches to the kernel. because how else can we play around with alternate methods outside of the mainstream kernel?
I still find it interenting that it allows someone to run programs as the user "nobody".
plus it seems like it could have someinteresting possibilities in the VM arena.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Saturday April 18 2015, @05:49AM
Everything fails and dies. That will include Windows and Linux and the Mac OS. The only questions are when and how. When the big boys start to die, it is one of these small hobby projects which will take a turn for the more serious and be in the right place at the right time. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen.
I'm not one to experiment with these kinds of OSes, but I am really glad there are people who do.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday April 18 2015, @05:56AM
Fails and Dies?
Nobody has ever woken up one morning to find every instance of a particular operating system inoperable.
Maybe you mean they are replaced by something better? But that's not going to be Hurd.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Saturday April 18 2015, @06:37AM
I was speaking generally -- not specifically about Hurd. Also, perhaps "fail" isn't the best word, but "death" is. And as I said earlier, "death" of an O.S. won't happen overnight, but it will happen.
Computers with operating systems / Operating Systems that I have used and are no longer viable in today's world and therefore dead: TRS-80, Commodore 64, DOS, OS/2, Atari, Intellivision.
Yes, I know some of the Atari enthusiast just dug up E.T. and I've seen articles about someone running a C64 somewhere and I've seen DOS used in a few instances of business, but it's safe to say that every single one of these is either is a dead O.S. or a computer that contains a dead O.S.
Apple nearly died a few years ago and is beginning to stumble again without Steve Jobs. Microsoft is not immune from making mistakes (Vista / Windows 8). Linux just is still going through a rough patch with systemd (no matter what your feelings are about the software).
Windows, Linux, and the Mac OS will go away. That's all I was saying. And no, experience tells me that replacements aren't always better.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday April 18 2015, @03:02PM
An operating system turns inoperable when the last piece of hardware it runs on stops working.
Sure, you can revive it by porting it to new hardware, or by writing an emulator for the old hardware. But that's extra work, and unless and until someone puts that work in, the operating system is inoperable, because it cannot run on any existing, working machine.
Indeed, I'm sure there are lots of operating systems that few people ever have heard of, that turned inoperable together with the machines they were written for.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.