Re: A simple question

[Bas Wijnen]

On Tue, Apr 11, 2006 at 08:09:30PM +0530, Jayabalan_Aaron wrote:
> first there was gnu-mack, then came l4-pistachio now  coyotes
> if its goin to be a gnu/os, then why not stick with a gnu microkernal,
> why change the microkernal so frequently, is it some thing to do with
> the hurd's expectations

No, it has to do with us, I suppose.  About Mach, I don't know, I wasn't there
at the time, but I suppose it was the only available option.  However, there
seem to be problems with it which are best solved by using a different
microkernel.  Pistachio was considered, because it could solve Mach's
(performance) problems.  However, it doesn't actually do (much) more than
that: the result will be similar to Hurd on Mach, but faster.  It is a lot of
work to write it, though.  Speaking for myself, I can say that I wasn't really
motivated to put in that much work, just for some performance gain.  Also,
Linux has changed to allow several things which only Hurd could do before
(user space file systems, for example), which makes it even less attractive to
work on it.

Coyotos is different.  It would give us a new system with new exciting
features.  Features which aren't going to be present in Linux, because a
complete rewrite would be required for them.  If you're interested, search the
list archive for "capability", "security" and "persistence".  These features
_are_ IMO worth the effort that it takes to port the Hurd to it.

We haven't actually decided that we'll use Coyotos, but it seems likely.  I
agree with you that we must avoid changing kernels all the time, just to get
even more features when it's ready.  Therefore I thing we should (and will)
stick with Coyotos, even if something better comes up (which seems unlikely
at the moment, but you never know :-) ).  However, this change is a good one,
because we need to build something that's really good, otherwise we don't have
interest in building it.

I hope this explains the reasons behind all the changes a bit.  Note that this
is my personal point of view, which may not be shared by all (or even any :-)
) others here.

Thanks,
Bas

-- 
I encourage people to send encrypted e-mail (see http://www.gnupg.org).
If you have problems reading my e-mail, use a better reader.
Please send the central message of e-mails as plain text
   in the message body, not as HTML and definitely not as MS Word.
Please do not use the MS Word format for attachments either.
For more information, see http://129.125.47.90/e-mail.html

signature.asc
Description: Digital signature