Why it does not make sense?

Why it does not make sense?

Posted Jul 24, 2011 9:12 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Fine-grain virtualization by sthibaul
Parent article: Signs of life from GNU Hurd

Making a point about "baah you need to run in KVM anyway" does not make sense.

Of course is does! Remember the context. You are trying to "sell" HURD to someone other then "developers who want to dig deeper into system development". This means they are not interested in the virtual possibilities. They want to use HURD here and now. And here and now KVM is just as much part of HURD development as it is part of Linux kernel development.

Yes, a big detail. But it's mostly about plugging existing drivers, is already being worked on, is already working for network boards, is now being integrated, and will probably continue with disks.

It's nice to know it's "already being worked on". When you'll finish it you'll need to fix the programs (because few developers will want to install HURD to do so), then you'll have a case for someone other then "developers who want to dig deeper into system development". Lot's of work - and looks like too few people to do it.

Throwing a model just because the implementation lacks some driver does not make sense.

Throwing model? Of course not. Throwing the implementation? This makes perfect sense.

I think HURD developers forget the main principle of IT: Good Enough (sometimes formulated as Worse is Better). Linux is used everywhere because it's
  1. Good enough.
  2. Cheap, familiar and well-known.
Note that "everywhere" means "everywhere where Windows is not used" (on servers Linux replaced UNIX not Windows). If you believe HURD should replace Linux (or any other OS) at some point you should explain what unique feature of HURD will push this switch and to do that you need to explain why anyone will care about said feature enough to ignore existing deficiencies.

Decide for yourself: do you want to push HURD as real OS (then it competes with FreeBSD, Linux, and Windows - and you need to concentrate on drivers and real applications) or do you want to push it as toy/learning OS (then it competes with Minix, Plan9 - you need to concentrate on documentation and learning courses).

HURD enthusiasts often looks as Esperanto enthusiasts: they preach the "bright future" where everyone will use HURD (or Esperanto) and positively refuse to talk about reality (which does not give you real reasons to believe said "bright future" will ever materialize).

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