Nothing’s really occured to me to post in a while, so here’s something kind of random. I’m actually posting this from GNU/HURD (specifically, the Debian distribution). I played around with it, installed some software, and eventually got Xorg and Mate running, and then Midori:
So how is it? Slow, for one thing. Not terribly while just using the terminal, but the install process took hours. The installer is the basic Debian installer, but things like copying files to the hard drive took longer than it seems like they would under GNU/Linux. The same is true of just installing packages. The desktop is of course noticeably sluggish as well, although using something like Openbox might improve things here. This machine is an old Dell Optiplex, with a 1.6 GHz P4 and 2 GB of RAM (only 768 MB were picked up according to htop). The graphics are Intel, which I think requires a kernel module on Linux, which of course isn’t supported here. This probably explains the X slowness, but otherwise while this machine is old it’s felt faster on other OSes.
As far as applications, there are quite a few Debian packages ported over, and while not everything works very smoothly (I tried getting Apache and PHP going, only to have mod-php give an error about allocating shared memory) a lot of familiar programs are available and do run. I dare say that there’s enough here to run an almost-functional desktop, although there is no sound or USB support (although keyboards/mice may work due to BIOS emulation).
So what’s the point of it then? The concept of HURD, as in how it runs on top of a microkernel, is interesting. Basically, this means that most of the services provided are run as a set of servers in userspace on top of a very minimal kernel (Mach in this case). This is in contrast to Linux, in which these are all part of the kernel. So, a fault in one of these servers doesn’t necessarily bring down the entire operating system. In fact, these programs don’t even have to run as root. This modularity may not be that much of a big deal on a normal desktop or server, considering how mature monolithic kernels like Linux are these days, but one could imagine an embedded or remote system where this could be desirable. (Think some diagnostic that restarts one of the servers should it crash, so your entire space probe doesn’t have to reboot.) Some other interesting features in GNU/HURD are the ability for a process to have more than one UID associated with it, as well as translators, which can expose things as part of the filesystem. (For example, they can be used to mount an FTP share on a directory, similar to Fuse.)
I’m probably not going to be installing a GNU/HURD desktop on my main computer anytime soon. In fact, I would guess that most people won’t be. (There are probably exceptions, like people who work on GNU/HURD.) For day-to-day use, it’s similar enough to a normal Debian (in this case, there are other HURD distributions) system that it’s not really worth the effort compared to the ease of the mainstream alternatives. However, I’ll be keeping an eye on this project now and then. Of course, there aren’t many people working on it compared to say Linux, so development isn’t exactly snappy. But, depending on how it matures it could hold promise in some applications. (Again I’m thinking of embedded systems.)
It’s also nice to have alternatives. This is part of the reason I use GNU/Linux, and experiment with other OSes. Even if HURD really isn’t ready now, it can actually be somewhat useable. So, I consider it worth checking out, if only as an educational experience. (And hopefully not as a cuationary tale.)