Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 21st Sep 2010 21:15 UTC, submitted by Gregory Plummer
"So what is the state of the Hurd? Is it vaporware, like Duke Nukem Forever? Fortunately not: the code exists, there is still work going on (for instance as part of Google Summer of Code), and there are even some relatively functional Hurd distributions. Let's look first at the code and the current architecture, and then at the Hurd distributions."
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Member since:2005-08-11
This post is pretty much completely wrong.
OSX is based on Nextstep, and they didn't write it from scratch in a very short time, they bought the damn thing and modified it. Before that Apple tried several times to replace the classic Mac OS, please google Pink, Taligent and Rhapsody.
MS has never tried several times to replace the NT kernel, they did however write it from scratch, and in 2001 used it to replace the Win9x line of Windows. Windows 7, Vista, XP and Win2k are all NT. NT is a modern kernel, with modern features, it would be stupid for MS to try and replace it.
Edited 2010-09-21 23:13 UTC
Member since:2009-06-20
Yeah, and the NextStep kernel appeared out of thin air?
It was a huge rewrite of Mach mixed with BSD, done by a small team lead by Avadis Tevanian in a couple years. Huge enough to be considered as a "new" kernel.
And the Longhorn kernel was supposed to be a complete rewrite, but they dropped everything and went back to improving NT.
Member since:2008-07-12
Additionally while MS Research has produced a many different kernels none of them have never been considered for implementation on commercial platforms irrespective of how good/interesting they were.
Even the most recent Singularity project which garnered a fair amount of interest was dismissed as only a test bed for incremental changes to the present kernel.
Member since:2008-12-09
NT is a modern kernel, with modern features, it would be stupid for MS to try and replace it.
Not stupid.
MS has been working on alternative OS (including new kernels) for a while. Take a look at singularity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_%28operating_system~*~...) for example.
They're "only" research OS but they're pretty damn cool IMO. And so who knows, the NT kernel might be replaced someday (along with a lot of the legacy)
RE[2]: Outdated article
by henderson101 on Wed 22nd Sep 2010 13:26
in reply to "RE: Outdated article"
Member since:2006-05-30
OSX is based on Nextstep, and they didn't write it from scratch in a very short time, they bought the damn thing and modified it.
Well, OpenStep {OS, not specification}, but essentially correct. NextStep's API was not OPENSTEP {Specification, not OS} compliant. The API in OpenStep 4.x is what Cocoa is based on/morphed from.
Before that Apple tried several times to replace the classic Mac OS :
True.
Pink,
Yes! Which was the project a few Be Engineers were working on before they joined Be Inc. There was Blue too, apparently.
Taligent
Technically, Taligent was what Pink became after Apple lost direction and took the "partnership" route. I have no idea if they shared a line of code, but I don't think Pink was an actual OS at the point they changed direction.
What you have COMPLETELY missed is Copland. This was what was to be Mac OS 8 and what was actually released Mac OS 8 ended up raping to steal a lot of the "new" features. I used to have a copy of Copland, but I never got it running because it required a serial debugger and I couldn't be arsed to mess about with it.
and Rhapsody.
Wrong. Wronger that a wrong turn in wrongton. Rhapsody *IS* Mac OS X. Rhapsody is Apples's "first go" at making OpenStep in to a Mac alike OS. The entire system is pure STEP, it just has the Workspace manager with an Apple style menu and platinum style Icons. In Fact, Mac OS X Server 1.x looks exactly like Rhapsody, and the initial developer released of OS X have a very similar "Finder" to Rhapsody. It wasn't till 3rd or 4th Developer Release that it started to look OS X-ish, and not till the Public Beta that it really was OS X as we know it.
MS has never tried several times to replace the NT kernel,
The Windows NT Kernel has been altered to varying degrees (sometimes beyond recognition) on a number of occasions.
1) NT 3.x > NT 4
2) XP > Vista/7
3) Server 2008
4) Longhorn (aborted)
5) Windows Mobile
NT 3.5 did not integrate the GDI. How much of a rewrite do you think it took to put the user land GDI functionality in to the NT4 kernel? It was not "trivial".
NT is a modern kernel, with modern features, it would be stupid for MS to try and replace it.
As to that last statement - it's debatable. I'd say, Windows 7 is the most happy I've been about Windows since Windows 2000 (which I used for about 6 years.) XP just seemed like tweaks over 2000 for the most part (yeah, super over generalisation, but let me have that one please :-)
Member since:2009-01-09
Features
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Member since:
2009-06-20
This one is far more instructive and correct:
http://www.h-online.com/open/features/GNU-HURD-Altered-visions-and-...
Little know fact: there is one production-ready widely used microkernel: the EKA2 at the heart of Symbian.
Creating a kernel is really a question of getting things right, rather than man-months of work: the EKA (symbian), XNU (OSX) and Linux kernel were all written in a short time by small teams, while the Hurd team, and also the behemoth Microsoft struggled (and often failed, as MS failed several times to produce a succesor to the NT kernel). So, getting a working Hurd may happen, one day...