Debian GNU/Hurd

I am currently installing Debian GNU/Hurd -- which has not yet seen official release -- into a virtual machine. It's both my first time using a virtual machine and my first time using a pure GNU system, so I'm keen to see how it works out.

I chose not to install any predefined collections of software.

I'm so fucking badass it hurts.

This is what a real installer looks like, kids:

But is GNU UNIX?

This is what a real installer looks like, kids:

Fixed.  Also, anybody who installs Windows XP using 3.5" floppys is hardcore.

I'd like to see how many floppies it would take for Win7.

Screens with that much blue on them scare me.

I'd like to see how many floppies it would take for Win7.

Well a full DVD requires about 3,300 floppy disks.

Linux does not support DVDs.

And this is what booting a real OS looks like:

Apparently I need a room number to use GNU...



Also, GNU is evidently not averse to internet memes:

I'm guessing that you are implying that you pressed enter for the default value, though this cannot be proven.

I'm guessing that you are implying that you pressed enter for the default value, though this cannot be proven.

No, I mean that it accepted "over 9000" for a room number field.

I am posting this from the w3m text-based browser on Debian GNU/Hurd.

It's hard as shit to use, but I haven't yet got X to start so I can't use any
graphical programs on GNU/Hurd yet. Also, for some reason it told me this
thread was locked when I went to reply, but let me type my post anyway. I
had to go and check in Iceweasel on GNU/Linux that it was actually unlocked.

Anyway, hopefully I'll get X to start up soon; I've already got it to go from
hanging indefinitely after not recognising my keyboard, to starting up only to
display a plain black screen (which turned out to be it not recognising my
mouse), to starting up and immediately crashing, which seems to be a problem
with OpenGL but I don't know how to fix it yet.

Also, w3m interestingly transfers me to nano for editing textareas. GNU nano
has no word wrapping functionality, hence my manually inserted line breaks.

I am posting this from the w3m text-based browser on Debian GNU/Hurd.

It's hard as shit to use, but I haven't yet got X to start so I can't use any
graphical programs on GNU/Hurd yet. Also, for some reason it told me this
thread was locked when I went to reply, but let me type my post anyway. I
had to go and check in Iceweasel on GNU/Linux that it was actually unlocked.

Anyway, hopefully I'll get X to start up soon; I've already got it to go from
hanging indefinitely after not recognising my keyboard, to starting up only to
display a plain black screen (which turned out to be it not recognising my
mouse), to starting up and immediately crashing, which seems to be a problem
with OpenGL but I don't know how to fix it yet.

Also, w3m interestingly transfers me to nano for editing textareas. GNU nano
has no word wrapping functionality, hence my manually inserted line breaks.

You know, for a guy who touts Free Software as superior to Windows code wise, you seem to have more problems then I ever had.
I mean... didn't recognize your keyboard?  Not recognizing your mouse causing a black screen?  What kind of software is that?

Quote from: Parsifal on October 16, 2010, 10:17:08 AM

I am posting this from the w3m text-based browser on Debian GNU/Hurd.

It's hard as shit to use, but I haven't yet got X to start so I can't use any
graphical programs on GNU/Hurd yet. Also, for some reason it told me this
thread was locked when I went to reply, but let me type my post anyway. I
had to go and check in Iceweasel on GNU/Linux that it was actually unlocked.

Anyway, hopefully I'll get X to start up soon; I've already got it to go from
hanging indefinitely after not recognising my keyboard, to starting up only to
display a plain black screen (which turned out to be it not recognising my
mouse), to starting up and immediately crashing, which seems to be a problem
with OpenGL but I don't know how to fix it yet.

Also, w3m interestingly transfers me to nano for editing textareas. GNU nano
has no word wrapping functionality, hence my manually inserted line breaks.

You know, for a guy who touts Free Software as superior to Windows code wise, you seem to have more problems then I ever had.
I mean... didn't recognize your keyboard?  Not recognizing your mouse causing a black screen?  What kind of software is that?

That kind of software is probably pre-alpha.  How do you think Windows 9 is doing right now?

You know, for a guy who touts Free Software as superior to Windows code wise, you seem to have more problems then I ever had.
I mean... didn't recognize your keyboard?  Not recognizing your mouse causing a black screen?  What kind of software is that?

There's a reason why Debian GNU/Hurd only exists in Debian's "unstable", "experimental" and "unreleased" repositories right now. That being, it's not nearly suitable for general use.

Quote from: Lorddave on October 16, 2010, 12:22:13 PM

You know, for a guy who touts Free Software as superior to Windows code wise, you seem to have more problems then I ever had.
I mean... didn't recognize your keyboard?  Not recognizing your mouse causing a black screen?  What kind of software is that?

There's a reason why Debian GNU/Hurd only exists in Debian's "unstable", "experimental" and "unreleased" repositories right now. That being, it's not nearly suitable for general use.

True but still... Unable to recognize a keyboard?  Are they rewriting the whole OS?

No, just the Kernel

True but still... Unable to recognize a keyboard?  Are they rewriting the whole OS?

The keyboard was recognised by HURD, but X would not recognise it. It's not a problem with the software, it's just that setting up the device files isn't yet automated on GNU/Hurd and I hadn't realised I needed to do it manually.

What does seem to be a problem with the software, however, is that loading the OpenGL libraries fails and causes X to crash immediately after it starts.

And as EnigmaZV said, what they're rewriting is the kernel -- strictly speaking, they are replacing the kernel, since what they are writing to replace it with is not a kernel, but a set of daemons running on the GNU Mach microkernel. As I'm sure you are aware, you can't just take a program written for Linux and just expect it to work on a different kernel -- the software in Debian needs to be ported, and that is the purpose of Debian GNU/Hurd at this point.

Quote from: Lorddave on October 16, 2010, 03:18:07 PM

True but still... Unable to recognize a keyboard?  Are they rewriting the whole OS?

The keyboard was recognised by HURD, but X would not recognise it. It's not a problem with the software, it's just that setting up the device files isn't yet automated on GNU/Hurd and I hadn't realised I needed to do it manually.

What does seem to be a problem with the software, however, is that loading the OpenGL libraries fails and causes X to crash immediately after it starts.

And as EnigmaZV said, what they're rewriting is the kernel -- strictly speaking, they are replacing the kernel, since what they are writing to replace it with is not a kernel, but a set of daemons running on the GNU Mach microkernel. As I'm sure you are aware, you can't just take a program written for Linux and just expect it to work on a different kernel -- the software in Debian needs to be ported, and that is the purpose of Debian GNU/Hurd at this point.

Ahhh, makes sense.
So why are they replacing the Kernel?  Trying something new?

Ahhh, makes sense.
So why are they replacing the Kernel?  Trying something new?

HURD has always been the GNU replacement for the UNIX kernel; development on it started in 1990. Then Linux came along in 1992, and HURD suddenly wasn't a huge priority anymore because a free kernel already existed.

According to Richard Stallman, he chose this design for HURD because he thought it would enable it to be completed quickly. He has said, retrospectively, that that was a design error. I still like the design of HURD for its technical merits, however much it may have hindered development.

Quote from: Lorddave on October 17, 2010, 01:02:39 AM

Ahhh, makes sense.
So why are they replacing the Kernel?  Trying something new?

HURD has always been the GNU replacement for the UNIX kernel; development on it started in 1990. Then Linux came along in 1992, and HURD suddenly wasn't a huge priority anymore because a free kernel already existed.

According to Richard Stallman, he chose this design for HURD because he thought it would enable it to be completed quickly. He has said, retrospectively, that that was a design error. I still like the design of HURD for its technical merits, however much it may have hindered development.

What are the technical merits?
It sounds like having a lot of daemons running would make it more module for smaller size and expandability but would complicate compatibility.

What are the technical merits?
It sounds like having a lot of daemons running would make it more module for smaller size and expandability but would complicate compatibility.

The technical merits stem from the fact that the kernel (currently GNU Mach, but a replacement microkernel called Viengoos is now in development) only does what is absolutely necessary for a kernel to do -- CPU scheduling, hardware management and such. Authentication, which was traditionally done in the UNIX kernel, is done by the authentication daemon in HURD. Process management, which was traditionally done inside the kernel, is done by the process daemon in HURD. Various other daemons perform tasks that are unnecessary in kernel land, continuing the historical trend of taking functionality from the kernel into user space -- indeed, the earliest computers arguably ran only the kernel, since they could not run more than once process at a time.

What this means is that to replace the functionality of one of these daemons, you don't need to recompile the kernel and reboot; you can simply replace that particular daemon and restart it. Furthermore, since the daemons run in user space (not kernel space), the daemons don't need to be trusted with supervisor privileges.

Finally, any user can run their own replacement daemon for any of the parts of the HURD. For instance, if I am logged into a GNU system, I can run my own authentication daemon that people can authenticate with. While this might not be particularly useful in itself, it illustrates the flexibility of HURD to allow users to opt out of services that would otherwise be built into the kernel.

I'm not sure what you mean by complicating compatibility. Compatibility with what? Of daemons with each other? Of application software with HURD? Of daemons with the microkernel?

I'm not sure what you mean by complicating compatibility. Compatibility with what? Of daemons with each other? Of application software with HURD? Of daemons with the microkernel?

Kind of all of the above.  Since the specific tasks are no longer standardized by being written in the Kernel, you have a greater chance that a daemon will conflict with another daemon.

Kind of all of the above.  Since the specific tasks are no longer standardized by being written in the Kernel, you have a greater chance that a daemon will conflict with another daemon.

Indeed, which is the reason why it took years for HURD to run at all, and it still isn't ready for general use after two decades. However, once it is working, I would expect it to be a far superior product to the traditional UNIX kernel. And since it is free software, we only need to get it working once to use it in any conceivable way.

Quote from: Lorddave on October 17, 2010, 01:46:15 AM

Kind of all of the above.  Since the specific tasks are no longer standardized by being written in the Kernel, you have a greater chance that a daemon will conflict with another daemon.

Indeed, which is the reason why it took years for HURD to run at all, and it still isn't ready for general use after two decades. However, once it is working, I would expect it to be a far superior product to the traditional UNIX kernel. And since it is free software, we only need to get it working once to use it in any conceivable way.

Indeed.
Reminds me of the old computer days when memory was in short supply so programs were minimalistic.  The things they did with 256k of RAM....

I've found Pastebinning things from w3m to be a great way to transfer error logs from the VM to the outside world.

X now works, and although I haven't been able to get Xfce to start, I have been using a neat little window manager called FVWM -- nice and easy on the virtual machine. I'm giving the VM a well-needed rest for now, as things were starting to lag quite significantly. Hopefully I'll be able to get a browser up and running (probably not Iceweasel, maybe Midori) so I can post on FES from GNU/Hurd.

Since DBus is borked, I can't use a graphical web browser (at least, any of the
graphical web browsers with which I am familiar) on Debian GNU/Hurd at present.
However, I am writing this post using Lynx, which is somewhat easier to use than w3m
(though still text-based).

Browsing forums is hard as shit with a text-based browser because apparently it didn't
occur to the SMF designers that anyone would want to view their site with anything
other than the latest version of Microzilla Chromifox, and so they have made the reply
buttons images. This is not, in itself, a problem, as lynx will simply display the
alternative text. What is a problem is that this is also true for the smileys,
so I have to move through them one by one to get to the posting textarea. Perhaps I
should just disable smileys.

I also need to work out how to make FVWM save my desktop settings. Currently, it keeps
reverting me to the default every time I start it up. That said, I'm quite enjoying FVWM,
and seriously considering switching to it on GNU/Linux too if I can iron out its
inconveniences.