QotH q3: Please comment on the quarter of the Hurd

[Arne Babenhauserheide]

I finally finished drafting the QotH (to be released on 2011-10 :) ). 

→ http://www.bddebian.com/~hurd-web/contributing/web_pages/news/moth_next/

I hope you enjoy reading it!  

If you see stuff which should go in, or stuff we should leave out or change, 
please write so!

------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ 
A quarter of the Hurd: *Arch with DDE*, *Debian boxes*, *GHM talk*, *GNU Mach 
fixes* and *GSoC: Java*.

In the third quarter of 2011, the Arch Hurd Hackers [packaged 
DDE](http://www.archhurd.org/news/22/),
so a subset of Linux 2.6 drivers can now be compiled on Arch Hurd to
run in userspace. At the time of writing it supports network cards,
while other driver-types still need their interfaces ported. Also they had
[a booth at FrOSCon](http://www.froscon.de/aussteller/projekt) and
[released a new Arch Hurd LiveCD](http://www.archhurd.org/news/24/),
so new users can easily test the current state of the Arch flavor of
the Hurd.

Also Richard Braun contributed new Debian and KVM-based
[[buildd,_porterbox_and_public_box|public_hurd_boxen]], making it
easier to test the Hurd without much setup as well as improving debian
packaging. 

Samuel Thibault wrote a new
[Bits from the Debian GNU/Hurd 
porters](http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/07/msg00002.html)
to keep the Debian Folks up to date with the results of our work. And
these are quite good: Thanks to the relentless work of our porters,
you can now use
[69.96% of debian packages with the 
Hurd](https://buildd.debian.org/stats/graph-big.png),
so we’re coming closer towards [getting Hurd into Debian as release 
arch](http://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/Hurd). If you
can port debian packages and want to help the Hurd, this is the
perfect time to get in contact and
[port your favorite missing 
package](http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-devel-debian)
to the Hurd.

A different type of status update was delivered by Samuel Thibault on
the GNU Hacker Meeting (GHM). Since the videos and slides from the GNU
Hacker Meeting 2011 in Paris are
[online](http://www.gnu.org/ghm/2011/paris/), now, we hope you enjoy
his talk on
[GNU/Hurd, aka. Extensibility from the 
Ground](http://audio-video.gnu.org/video/ghm2011/Samuel_Thibault-GNU_Hurd.ogv)
([slides](http://www.gnu.org/ghm/2011/paris/slides/samuel-thibault-hurd.pdf)). 
He
explains nicely how the simple concept of translators gives power to
non-priviledged and casual users (once we get some of these :) )
without security implications, and how Sub-Hurds and Neighbor-Hurds
compare to Linux containers.

    “It’s all about freedom #0”

On the technical side, Thomas Schwinge improved the technical documentation of 
the
[[hurd/io_path]] in translators to make it easier for new developers to start 
hacking and Guillem Jover, Fridolin Pokorny and Jonathan Neuschäfer
[sent](http://lists.gnu.org/bug-hurd/2011-08/msg00184.html)
[many](http://lists.gnu.org/bug-hurd/2011-08/msg00093.html)
[patches](http://lists.gnu.org/bug-hurd/2011-08/msg00030.html) for
 GNU Mach, improving stability, fixing memory leaks and cleaning up
code. 

Additionally Maksym Planeta replaced GNU Mach’s old zalloc memory
allocator with the new balloc from Richard Braun
([integration 
commit](http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/hurd/gnumach.git/commit/?id=50d073c5ef0feb1676606d0068abf626e8297cd7)),
which handles slabs and should waste less memory than zalloc. Also
balloc has a cpu cache level, so it should work faster on SMP systems,
once we get up do date SMP CPU drivers for GNU Mach.

And last but definitely not least, Jeremie Koenig finished his Google
Summer of Code project to
[Improve Java on 
Hurd](http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/user/jkoenig/java.html). He
[improved the Hurd 
signalling](http://lists.gnu.org/bug-hurd/2011-06/msg00073.html),
ported OpenJDK and created a
[Java Hurd-Library](https://github.com/jeremie-koenig/hurd-java) which
already allows writing a
[Hello World translator in 
Java](https://github.com/jeremie-koenig/hurd-java/blob/master/HelloMach.java). 
It
is still pretty low-level, but it paves the way for extending the core
of the Hurd with Java, which gets the count of supported languages to
3: [[C(++)|hacking-guide/hhg#An-Example-using-trivfs]],
[[common_lisp|user/flaviocruz]] and Java.

So if you want to help get the Hurd into Debian as full release arch,
so the power to the Hurd gives to casual users can actually get into
the Hands of these, or dig dig deep into DDE to have more Linux
drivers running in Userspace, please [[get_in_contact|contact_us]] -
and maybe grab [[our_source_repos|source_repositories]].
------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ 

Best wishes,
Arne