Whatever happened to Hurd? The story of GNU OS
Linked by the_randymon on Mon 7th Jan 2013 18:56 UTC
OSNews, Generic OSes The mostly-morubund Hurd project is well known for what it's not: the kernel at the heart of the GNU/Linux system. But there's a long and interesting story about what it could have been, too. From Linux User magazine: "The design of the Hurd was an attempt to embody the spirit and promise of the free software movement in code." Those are mighty ambitions, and this story is as much about competing visions as competing kernels. Says Thomas Bushnell: "My first choice was to take the BSD 4.4-Lite release and make a kernel. I knew the code, I knew how to do it. It is now perfectly obvious to me that this would have succeeded splendidly and the world would be a very different place today." This is a well-written and fascinating read.
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RE[5]: Re:
by Laurence on Tue 8th Jan 2013 15:34 UTC in reply to "RE[4]: Re:"
Laurence
Member since:
2007-03-26

Seriously it's been used for SAAS, CPU Virtualization, outsourced file storage, web apps, and even for streaming music. It seems that anything running on the internet might be described as "running in the cloud". Hey folks, now you can talk to your friends in the cloud - it's called IRC. It's all marketing, IBM has been pioneering "clouds" for decades.

That was largely my point about TSS ;)


Meh, I benefit from both and I couldn't care less what people want to call it. It's rare that people cannot figure it out from the context. If non-gnu userspace linux kernel distros became widely popular, then there'd be a plausible case of ambiguity, but until then I don't care about pedantry.

Fair point. I like that attitude.

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[6]: Re:
by Alfman on Tue 8th Jan 2013 15:49 in reply to "RE[5]: Re:"
Alfman Member since:
2011-01-28

Laurence,

"That was largely my point about TSS"

Haha, I'm afraid that I didn't know what that meant.

Duck duck go helpfully suggested these definitions:

Toxic shock syndrome (fatal illness)
Total suspended solids (fluids)
Total sum of squares (mathematics)
Time Sharing System
Task State Segment
Transcription start site (RNA)
Tromsø Satellite Station


By the process of elimination, I see what you mean about facebook being a reimagination of Toxic shock syndrome ;)

Reply Parent Score: 3

RE[7]: Re:
by Laurence on Tue 8th Jan 2013 15:57 in reply to "RE[6]: Re:"
Laurence Member since:
2007-03-26

hahaha

If you hadn't already guessed, I was referring to Time Sharing Systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_sharing

It's basically the fore-running principle behind UNIX's conception and gave birth to the computing paradigm of many users on a single platform sharing resources - often connected via thin clients / dumb terminals.

The only commonality between all the different cloud usages which I've encountered was what I'd have described as TSS; shared centralised resources which typically (though not always) handle the majority of the data processing.

In some ways, and specifically with the raise of web apps, it feels like we're going back to a 60s computing paradigm.

Edited 2013-01-08 15:59 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 3