I seem to recall the Hurd people talking about cool scenarios like filesystem drivers written entirely in user mode that don't require root. Something like that.

I booted it on real hardware sometime in the early 2000s, and it worked but was very anticlimactic.

I do know that the Mach microkernel they based it on (also the basis for Apple's XNU kernel) is considered dated. Later microkernels are supposed to have better performance.

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tombert 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah, that's what I've always thought was interesting about microkernels; the ability to have a lot more stuff in user space always seemed like the obvious "correct" direction to me.

I played with RedoxOS a bit in a virtual machine a few years ago [1], and it seemed cool, so maybe that can be the logical successor to something like Hurd.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedoxOS

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eadmund 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> I played with RedoxOS a bit in a virtual machine a few years ago, and it seemed cool, so maybe that can be the logical successor to something like Hurd.

A problem with RedoxOS is that it is not GPLed: contributors have no assurance that they and others will be able to use software built with their contributions.

Microsoft, Apple, Google and Facebook all have plenty of money to pay engineers; they don’t need my contributions for free.

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pjmlp 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Which is how most drivers now work across macOS, Windows and Android/Linux.

Unfortunely other UNIX clones rather keep going as "things were always done around here"

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4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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dietr1ch 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Oh, I thought that was going to die shortly after Jeremy moved to System76, but it didn't,

- https://www.redox-os.org/news/

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cmrdporcupine 4 days ago | parent [-]

Project seems quite healthy to me. I was intending on trying it over the weekend but dragged into chores instead.

I think there's some spark there.

	▲	goku12 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Their matrix community (spaces) sees a healthy level of discussions. Even those related to project governance. The project is very much alive. And I believe that they're also porting the COSMIC desktop to Redox.

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goku12 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have heard even more fantastic ideas. For example, the IPC and memory protection being served by userspace servers (I don't know how valid this is, or if I understood this correctly). You could have features similar to namespaces and cgroups by default, without the extra logic and code. You could have had native containerization from the start.

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bawolff 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

And now we have FUSE. The good ideas do get taken up by the mainstream.

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asveikau 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I feel like there's a difference between FUSE, an anomalous way to implement a filesystem, and having the user-space method be the primary mechanism to implement a filesystem. The latter ensures that the user-space thing doesn't have a quality gap with "real" FS drivers.

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marcosdumay 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

We have entire userspace network protocols, ePBF, and to some extent even ePool pooling ideas from microkernels. But A single disgruntled kernel dev is enough to stop Rust device drivers from existing, so no, the idea is still not here.

	▲	steveklabnik 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That didn’t happen.
	▲	josefx 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Even the Asahi Linux lead threatening Linus with a witchhunt against all kernel maintainers did not manage to finish off the ongoing Rust integration. People may not like it but it isn't going down easily.