From: eric@tantalus.dell.com (Eric Youngdale) Subject: Re: GNU Hurd (was Re: BSD Unix) Date: 21 Jul 1992 18:24:58 GMT
In article <1992Jul21.131526.8920@ncsu.edu> jlnance@eos.ncsu.edu (JAMES LEWIS NANCE) writes:
>
>In article <1992Jul21.112705.6276@cs.cornell.edu>, murthy@cs.cornell.edu (Chet Murthy) writes:
>|> free unix is perhaps 2 years away - in 2 years, linux will be stable.
>|> In two years, the GNU Hurd will be stable. And AT&T can
>
>I have been wondering this for some time but have refrained from asking it
>because it sounds like a flame, but it is not.
>
>GNU has been working on Hurd for as long as I have know about them. This has
>been at least 3 years, and I have seen nothing from them. Linus has been
>working on linux for about a year and a half, and has produced a very good
>operating system. Does anyone know what is taking GNU so long? Prehaps they
>have released beta versions that I am unaware of, or prehaps they do not
>want to release anything before they get it finished? Anyone know?
The one important difference is that hurd is supposed to be able to run
on any type of machine (sparc, vax, 386, etc). This makes the problem far more
complicated. Device drivers need to be written and optimized for each machine.
I would also guess (based on experience with some of the other gnu utilities)
that it may be suffering from feeping creaturism. This is, of course, purely
conjecture.
I have seen alpha versions (or perhaps pre-alpha) on some of the GNU
machines at mit, but I have never tried to download it, and I have never
seen an announcement.