Re: [dionv@spots.ab.ca: Should I continue to study linux-based GNU?]
On Wed, 27 Oct 1999 12:53:58 EDT, the world broke into rejoicing as
John Tobey <jtobey@john-edwin-tobey.org> said:
> Everyone's going to have a different answer to this, but here's mine.
>
> It is not at all certain that the Hurd will replace Unix and Linux.
> The Hurd has a very different underlying design from Linux, so they
> will both be better at some things and worse at others. Therefore, I
> expect Linux or something similar to live long after the Hurd becomes
> useful.
>
> I suggest you study the parts of GNU that are common to Hurd and
> Linux, such as the GNU C Library, development tools applications, and
> the Debian system. NT should be learned on an as-needed basis, IMO.
Right now it is not at all clear what is likely.
Right now, Hurd is not far enough done for it to be clear whether it
will either:
a) Flourish, or
b) Wither.
It's not sufficiently functional for it to be "more useful than Linux"
for practical purposes Right Now. At this point, while there may be
a few things you can do with Hurd that you can't with Linux, there
are a whole lot *more* applications Linux supports that Hurd doesn't.
That needs to be couched with the caveat "Yet."
Two issues then arise:
a) Is Hurd going to develop to the point where it can support a system
relatively comparable in functionality to systems based on Linux?
b) Is there some compelling purpose that Hurd can serve that Linux
inherently *cannot?*
The latter is the critical question; if there is a compelling application,
then people will come. If there isn't, then it is reasonably likely that
a main merit of Hurd may be in helping Debian to become more portable
and more supportive of "kernels other than Linux."
Which is of value; if Hurd lays the path to help it to be possible
for there to be a successor OS to Linux, that *is* of merit.
If Hurd provides an experimenting ground that spurs on work on other
improvements, that's valuable. There are few other multiserver
microkernel systems, and probably fewer instances deployed than there
are of Hurd.
--
Real Programmers use: "compress -d > a.out"
cbbrowne@ntlug.org- <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/oshurd.html>
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