GNU Hurd is a Unix-like
operating system. The main aim of GNU project is to use a computer with a
software that will not infringe users’ freedom. This philosophy was later
published as the GNU Manifesto in March 1985. GNU is a collection of
programs such as applications, developer tools, libraries and even games. The
development of GNU started in January 1984, and it was named as GNU Project.
Most of the GNU programs are released under GNU Project which are known
as GNU Packages.
Richard Stallman initiated
the GNU Hurd operating system project in 1983, as a project to create a
complete free operating system. It was released as a free software under the
GNU general public license (first it was called Emacs
General Public License) which was also written by Stallman. The goal of
this license is to guarantee users freedom to share and change free software.
The reason behind the creation of this license was his experience with James Gosling and
a program called UniPress.
In 80’s most of the GNU packages
had its own license. The GCC General Public License, the Emacs General Public
License etc. In 1989, Free Software Foundation (FSF) published a common license
“GNU general public license” which they could use for all their software and
which could also be used by non-GNU projects.
GNU's own kernel, The Hurd is
a multi-server micro kernel written as a part of GNU. Thomas Bushnell claims
that HURD is an acronym for "Hird of Unix-Replacing Daemons," where
"Hird" is intended to mean "Hurd of Interfaces Representing
Depth". It has been designed as a replacement of UNIX kernel and was in
development since 1990 by the GNU project of the Free Software Foundation. Hurd
is a collection of protocols and server processes (daemons) which runs on the
GNU Mach micro kernel to implement network protocols and authentication, file
systems, file access control and other features that are normally implemented
by the UNIX kernel.
Hurd provides a compatibility layer such that providing
higher level programs is essentially transparent. Their mission is to “create a general-purpose kernel suitable for the GNU operating
system, which is viable for everyday use, and gives users and programs as much
control over their computing environment as possible.”
The development of Hurd has proceeded slowly, it has yet not
considered suitable for production environments. There are still a significant
number of bugs to be corrected and some missing features, as a whole the
development in general has not met expectations. After more than twenty years
under development they were not very optimistic about the GNU Hurd, it required
solving some deep problems.
When it comes to the task of creating a kernel, Stallman had
his hands partially tied up by the necessity to maintain already developed
products as well as the lack of understanding of the OS design issues. But unlike Linus Torvalds’s vision (the creator of the
LINUX kernel), his vision of GNU kernel development was more modest. His vision
was not to re-implement a kernel using key ideas of BSD kernel (Berkeley
Software Distribution (BSD) is a UNIX operating system)
as a blueprint, but to reuse an existing prototype. Unfortunately his idea of
choosing Mach micro kernel as a prototype did not full fill his requirement of
speeding up the work.
GNU Hurd’s
project growth is considered to be slow. It's really more a set of ideas than
an operating system. Although Gnu Hurd
is architecturally superior, it is a long way behind in terms of stability,
performance, features etc.
According to our research the main drawbacks of Hurd are as follows,
- GNU Hurd had failed to deliver on its promise of an entirely free UNIX replacement.
- There were number of technical shortcomings with the design of the Hurd.
- Linux stepped in and provided an advanced operating system which picked up GNU Hurd’s slack and which is ready to use.
- One of the biggest issues in Hurd is that, when a client makes a call, instead of server performing the requested action kernel and other resources are allocated for that purpos
- Hurd didn’t satisfy user requirements: Users care about the applications and hardware support more than the underlining architecture arrangements.
- The initial idea of GNU was to build a micro kernel based OS but the Hurd kernel was not built in the requested time to continue their proceedings of building a GNU OS.
- Constantly switching priorities and technology.
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