«Hurd having been in development for so long, but still not production-ready; and with Linux as a mature free kernel being firmly established as the de-facto standard kernel for the GNU system -- people often wonder: why haven't developers abandoned the Hurd long ago? Without going into technical details, this short talk tries to explain the main idea behind the Hurd architecture, which sets it apart from other systems.» — via Why is Anyone Still Working on the GNU Hurd? —
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Anybody up to writing good directory software?
Tue, 2007-02-20 11:17 — David JonathanSince the very beginning, directories (of any kind) have had a very central role in the internet. (I have recently grown fond of Free Web Directory. Even Slashdot can be considered a directory: a collection of great news and invaluable user-generated comments. As far as software is concerned, doing a quick search on Google about software directories will return the free (as in freedom) software directories like Savannah, SourceForge, Freshmeat and so on, followed by shareware and freeware sites such as FileBuzz, PCWin Download Center and All Freeware (great if you're looking for shareware and freeware, but definitely less comprehensive than their free-as-in-freedom counterparts).
Is better education the key to finding better software?
Sat, 2007-03-03 03:25 — Edward RusselI read David Jonathon's article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software? the other day, which got me thinking about software directories in general. As David mentioned, many of the software directories one finds when doing a quick google search are free as in beer, not as in freedom. But what interests me is the software directories that already exist, providing a combination of both free as in beer software, and open source software. Sites such as Freeware Downloads and Shareware Download don't advertise themselves as providing free as in liberty software, but each of them have a good selection of open source software available... if you know where to look.
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Mr. Psychopath
2 years 15 weeks 5 days 27 min ago
Looks Awesome
Ever since I heard about the Arch Hurd project, my hopes spiked back up at the possibility that I'd ever get a Hurd system running. I wish best of luck to the Arch Hurd team.
aboutblank
2 years 15 weeks 3 days 9 hours ago
re: Looks Awesome
I follow the official Hurd mailing lists. I can tell you that while progress is definitely happening, I'm pessimistic about you running a Hurd system that's usable as other systems within the near future. In my opinion, this is because the Hurd team is trying to simultaneously achieve two monumental tasks: researching powerful computer science ideas and translating these ideas into real code that's appropriate for the Hurd. Another major problem is that hardware drivers need to be ported to Hurd. Currently, there is effort invested into a "Linux compatibility layer" that would allow Linux 2.6 drivers to work in Hurd.
I think that with more people in development, we could possibly a usable Hurd in the nearer future. So this is my call to any bored OS hacker: if you're tired of tinkering with mature Linux or BSD systems and need a different challenge, come cooperate with the Hurd team and let us make Hurd a reality.