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<azeem>so if I look through the user tasks in the Mach debugger, they seem to usually have TH_SWAPPED (O), what does it mean if a task doesn't have it?

<azeem>that's not clear to me

<azeem>s/task/thread/

<azert>bjorkintosh: are you still around?

<bjorkintosh>ah yes.

<bjorkintosh>azert: so what can I learn about gnumach from you?

<azert>what drives your curiosity for gnumach?

<bjorkintosh>I want to know what makes it so special.

<bjorkintosh>and how to fix its failings.

<azert>special respect to what?

<bjorkintosh>I understand it's not quite a micro-kernel.

<bjorkintosh>unlike (from what I've read), QNX

<azert>let’s say that the Hurd is designed to run on it

<bjorkintosh>I see. but hurd can run on anything else though can't it?

<azert>what do you perceive as failures in GNUMach?

<bjorkintosh>I don't know anything about gnumach, so I cannot say.

<azert>no, originally the Hurd was designed to run on any variant of Mach. Now only on GNUMach

<bjorkintosh>I'm at the moment, trying to learn how to use gnumach effectively in the first place.

<azert>there is no other way

<azert>you boot it using multiboot, that is a protocol implemented by GRUB

<azert>only on x86

<azert>this is a limitation, we would like

<bjorkintosh>I've got it running on proxmox (qemu) right now.

<azert>to see it ported to arm64

<azert>Good

<azert>it can also run on many real hardware

<azert>if it doesnt work on your machine, chances are that it can be fixed with few modifications

<bjorkintosh>ah right.

<azert>so overall it is a solid microkernel

<bjorkintosh>are the gnuMach sources easy to read and understand?

<azert>yep

<azert>easier than Linux

<azert>the complexity is comparable to a bsd kernel of 30 years ago

<bjorkintosh>how does it compare with minix?

<azert>very much comparable

<bjorkintosh>oh good.

<azert>GNUMach is actively developed, Minix is not

<azert>bjorkintosh: are you a programmer ?

<bjorkintosh>yeah.

<bjorkintosh>but I don't know C well at all. I'm your regular old python/R/sql/tcl/commonlisp person.

<azert>what interests you the most about gnumach?

<bjorkintosh>curiosity.

<azert>I have the feeling that you would like it replaced by something else, but you don’t really know why and what

<bjorkintosh>azert: I've only had it running for 2 or 3 days now. first time ever.

<bjorkintosh>I quite literally know nothing about it.

<azert>what did you do with it in those couples of days?

<bjorkintosh>I have other OSes running on proxmox too: plan9, haiku, minix, openbsd, and a bunch of others.

<bjorkintosh>azert: I set it up, downloaded the sources, and played around with emacs inside hurd.

<azert>I guess GNUMach looks and feel like Debian, right?

<bjorkintosh>because of the posix userland.

<bjorkintosh>same thing with BeOS/Haiku, which looks like linux as well, but is clearly not the same thing.

<azert>Nope. compare it to a bad. It is because the operating system is GNU, that normally happens to run on Linux

<bjorkintosh>BSD?

<azert>the biggest difference between Hurd and Linux on a virtual machine is systemd

<azert>Openbsd is clearly different from debian

<azert>I think systemd will never run on the Hurd or BSDs, as such Linux might diverge

<bjorkintosh>azert: how do you use hurd?

<azert>Nobody wants to run 2m lines of buggy C code as pid 1

<azert>hurd still runs shell scripts to bring up daemons

<azert>I take pleasure in looking at it evolving, play a bit with it when I find time and focus, and hope one day will be my daily driver

<azert>I like that progress move slowly but steadily, since that’s how my own things move

<azert>I hate following things like Linux development since that looks like hell to me

<azert>You can literally follow people in the Linux community break apart into pieces

<azert>trajectories that look like ballistic rockets. Think about Hans Raiser

<azert>I’m not American btw.

<azert>bjorkintosh: are you American?

<bjorkintosh>yeah I am.

<bjorkintosh>doesn't mean I can't read though :-D

<azert>Ahah

<azert>which state? Area? If you don’t mind

<bjorkintosh>TX area.

<azert>Been in Houston recently. Great food.

<bjorkintosh>great food? where did you eat?

<azert>At least three places were remarkable. A Texan bbq, a southern seafood with great crab, a traditional texmex place

<azert>with fresh handmade tortillas

<bjorkintosh>'southern' and 'seafood'. that's cajun food.

<azert>The seafood is clearly French cousine derived

<azert>Yep

<azert>Lots of swamp over there

<bjorkintosh>azert: next time you should go on a swamp tour if you can. they're surprising.

<bjorkintosh>azert: anyway, I'm interested in learning all I can about hurd, as I have a general interest in OSes.

<azert>I think that the best approach is to chose a task and try to solve it

<bjorkintosh>hmm. good advice.

<bjorkintosh>I should learn C properly first. Been dragging my feet for far too long.

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2026-01-27.log