Re: [OT] HURD vs Linux/HURD

Gaël Le Mignot
2003-07-19T16:52:11Z

Hello Christian!

19 Jul 2003 17:02:41 +0200, you wrote:

> On Sat, 2003-07-19 at 17:03, John Bradford wrote:
>> > Given that large chunks of HURD come from Linux, please refer to it as
>> > Linux/HURD.
>>
>> What HURD code comes from Linux? GNU/Mach uses code from Linux, but
>> not HURD as far as I know.

> Neither to my knowledge -

> GNU/HURD uses GNU/MACH as the microkernel (and GNU/MACH uses Linux 2.0
> drivers), but they are actually thinking of switching to another MACH
> implementation once it's stable.

To be more exact:

- GNU/Hurd, the whole systems, is actually GNU tools (libc, linker,
...) on top of the GNU Hurd (set of servers) and the GNU Mach
microkernel.

- GNU Mach 1.x uses drivers from Linux 2.0.36 (IIRC)

- GNU Mach 2.0 (actually 1.9, as a beta version), uses the OSKit
framework, and such drivers from Linux 2.2.12 (but nearly any driver
for Linux 2.2 can be easily ported) or FreeBSD (I don't remember
which version, we actually use more Linux drivers).

- In the future, we'll probably use the L4 microkernel. On top of L4,
we'll have to implement user space drivers. That'ld probably take
time, so we may reuse Linux drivers with glue code as a temporary
solution.

- pfinet (our TCP/IP server) comes from Linux 2.0 IP stack, but we
need a rewrite for that (first because Linux 2.0 stack's is not the
best in the world ;) and then because kernel-space code runned in
user-space with glue code isn't either fast nor flexible).

I'm not aware of other use of Linux code inside the Hurd project, or
even inside the GNU project, but there may be.

--
Gael Le Mignot "Kilobug" - kilobug@nerim.net - http://kilobug.free.fr
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