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<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>Something that I have done with Linux before, and would be interested to try with Hurd, was building the kernel from source, and then running it. One of the things I managed run was Busybox.

<sam_>busybox I think is in theory buildable but you would need to disable a bunch of applets

<sam_>I gave up on finding the list needed

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>probably won't do busybox specifically

<rrq>note also that on hurd "the kernel" refers to a small collective of modules

<rrq>i.e. the bootloader need to put those into ram before passing control to "the primary"

<rrq>ACTION I just woke up, obviously :)

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>rrq: I'm very much used to the way Linux boots, initramfs is still kinda confusing though

<rrq>hurd uses multiboot, loading some five modules before gnumach starts

<rrq>and module linkages are first declared in the multiboot setup

<rrq>note that I'm not very deep inte the module code but dealt with the bootloading issue a fair bit

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>looked at multiboot a couple of times, never wrote anything for it that ran though

<rrq>yeah I guess in some way one could say gnumach is the Kernel and it gets addresses of the other as a few ram blocks

<azert>GNU_Hurd_Rocks: if you are into such from scratch things and you think multiboot is flawed, you might be interested in the aarch64 and riscv ongoing porting projects

<azert>they will use a device tree instead of multiboot

<azert>that is a system to load up modules and specify memory regions quite more simple and generic than multi boot

<azert>and acpi tables

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>I have nothing against multiboot though

<azert>you mentioned you never managed to do anything with it

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>azert: ACPI likes over-complicating things unnecessarily

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>in general the thing I was trying to do was flawed

<azert>yes, but I have to say that the device tree is not completely replacing acpi

<azert>if you have a pci bus, you’ll need acpi

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>azert: and some hardware is interesting enough to where it boots a UF2 and then expects you to know memory addresses already, Pico 2 as an example

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>I think some pass a dtb in memory, not familiar with it though

<azert>dtb is the device tree

<azert>the memory address is stored there

<azert>you don’t need to “know” it, just look it up in the dtb

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>I think there are also cases where the dtb needs to be made ahead and included into the software because for some reason it isn't passed at boot time

<azert>multiboot doesn’t offer this functionality. In fact on the x86 pc you “need to know it”

<azert>no the boot loader has the function to load the dtb in memory

<azert>check the u-boot documentation

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>I've mostly looked at painful Android related things...

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>easily the worst OS using a linux kernel

<rrq>which arch are you targeting?

<z6np-6w>GNU_Hurd_Rocks, Android isn't really an OS designed for personal computers is why. Its designed for smartphones and fondelslabs.

<z6np-6w>Its the best phone OS imho.

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>even for phones I think it sucks, would rather have access to the more sane desktop apps instead, some of which should already have touch support

<z6np-6w>Phones require lots of blobs and licensed dev libs and aren't designed for you to modify hardware components

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>there is at least one company that ships devices with I think Plasma, not certain if it's debian based

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks> https://furilabs.com/

<z6np-6w>So they just built a whatchacallit userland stripped down to the bare essentials designed with a GUI as its primary human interface devie

<z6np-6w>*device

<z6np-6w>its annoying to try and use it like GNU/Linux

<z6np-6w>basically you compile it to configure it beyond whats on the menus

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>that's the thing though, I would much rather be using Plasma or GNOME on a mobile device compared to Android UI, along with the other applications

<z6np-6w>they threw most of the UNIX Philosophy™ away. Human readable text config files were not a design priority or the UNIX Filesystem Hierarchy Standard

<z6np-6w>GNU_Hurd_Rocks, no doubt but plasma and gnome libs have so much stuff thats not needed for anything on a phone so they muntzed it until it broke then patched it up and thats what we got

<z6np-6w>Firing up android console and editing files is not how it was designed to be used, and you can tell, it sucks and there's very little you can actually even do

<z6np-6w>thats embedded development for you

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>adb shell doesn't even allow modifying of some things in /

<z6np-6w>ikr? Even the filesystem hierarchy is mysterious with confusing overlay mounts

<z6np-6w>idk how android compares to ios either but I suspect that Apple did about the same thing to macOS

<z6np-6w>afaik ubuntu and windows phone are both dead ducks

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>Ubuntu Touch is sort of alive, at least one or two devices ship with it as an option

<z6np-6w>wow you gotta admire their tenacity to even try to compete with Alphabet or Apple

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>The Volla devices...

<z6np-6w>I usually flash my phones to LineageOS at some point if I keep them long enough,

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>ah android based, I have actually ran a GSI image before

<z6np-6w>I get the budget pixels just because they always get official LineageOS support, but the vanilla Google Android is the best "vendor" android so I often just run that for a few years first.

<z6np-6w>iphones just cost too much because they're designed for people with more money than brains imo hahaha :P

<z6np-6w>they're super easy to use and super expensive

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>I've wanted to try the Terminal app that was added but it seems I lack support for it sadly

<z6np-6w>I have a terminal app installed, but its like a third wheel.

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>apparently future support for GTK or QT apps may be a thing for Android

<z6np-6w>chromebooks can install a containerized full gnu userland but its performance is not compelling

<z6np-6w>my favorite linux DE is actually Xfce

<z6np-6w>I install plasma though so I can run all the QT apps

<z6np-6w>GNU_Hurd_Rocks, I'm getting into fpga's now. My curiosity is piqued with regards to Hurd.

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>I tested ChromeOS Flex on the laptop I am currently on, the debian container it uses was terrible and I think GPU acceleration was non-existent

<z6np-6w>I might be able to put some of Hurd's server into hardware

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>oh damn, hardware based hurd

<z6np-6w>Is there an AARCH64 microkernel that works with Hurd yet?

<z6np-6w>I can slap one kinda fpga on top of a rpi5 as a hat

<z6np-6w>wouldn't that be wild to put the microkernel into hardware?

<z6np-6w>I'm not even sure if that actually makes sense tho :D

<z6np-6w>An rpi5 with a tang 138k hat is something I'm putting together.

<z6np-6w>So thats a quadcore Cortex A76, an AE350 riscv, plus a huge FPGA fabric

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>huh RPI and RISCV?

<z6np-6w>well, the tang mega 138k has a builtin riscv

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>I have looked at getting a RPI5 before though, but then got a tablet oof

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>wish I didn't get it because yeah

<z6np-6w>I've had a few cheapie tablets but I don't like them that much. I got a $100 Samsung A10 that mostly collects dust

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>I went about $120 ish I think for a Lenovo

<z6np-6w>I occasionally buy cheap little dev boards like ESP32s just to mess around with. Anything under $20 was fair game for an impulse buy, but now I got a little more coin coming in so I'm not stuck just with microcontrollers anymore.

<z6np-6w>rpi5s price kinda went up because of RAM shortage

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>I want a Pi Zero 2w, or a RISC-V equivalent

<z6np-6w>I have one I think. Might not even be using it.

<z6np-6w>I upgraded one of my dmr hotspots

<z6np-6w>could probably just send whatever it is to you gratis, pay it forward ;)

<z6np-6w>i'll look around if you're interested

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>they are unfortunately out of stock on the sources I check

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>biggest pain of RPI is that lol

<z6np-6w>I build computers and gadgets for a hobby so I wind up with miscellaneous hardware sometimes

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>It's like when I wanted the Pico 2w but the source I looked at was out of stock, they have the version with headers though

<GNU_Hurd_Rocks>I might consider getting the headered version actually...

IRC channel logs

2026-09-12.log