what we need

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 11:35:15 +0200

We created a list of the things we still need for using the Hurd for in our day-to-day activities (work or hobby).

As soon as these issues are taken care of, the Hurd offers everything we need for fullfilling most of our computing needs on at least one of our devices:

USB (5): Arne, ms, Michael, Emilio, antrik²³

Wireless (5): Arne, ms, Carl Fredrik, Michael (netbook), antrik (notebook). working version with DDE in 2010.

Sound (4): ms, Carl Fredrik, Michael, antrik²

SATA (2): Michael, (Emilio). Done, see sata disk drives.

Tested for modern machines°¹ (2): Emilio, antrik (notebook)

Stable Xorg° (2): Emilio, antrik

PPPoE (2): Carl Fredrik, antrik²

Graphical Desktop (1): Emilio

Full featured high-resultion console which doesn’t need X (1): antrik

Switching between console and X° (1): antrik

full-featured browser (i.e. Firefox)°⁵ (1): antrik

NFS working for climm, w3m and git (1): antrik⁴

mplayer with win32codecs (1): antrik³

gnash or alternatives (1): antrik³

°: Very likely needed by more people, but not named as most pressing issue.
¹: It’s unclear on which processors the Hurd would have problems. Please report it if you have one!
→ info
²: Would be OK to use a router box instead.
³: Not critical but would be convenient.
⁴: Only while not using Hurd as the only machine.
⁵: We’re close to that.

So, if one of these issues seems to be interesting for you, or you think “I can do that easily”, why not become a Hurd hacker and add your touch?

You can reach us in the mailing lists and in irc.

The sourcecode is in our source repositories (git). When you want to check sources relevant for you, DDE might be a good place to start for wireless and sound. USB on the other hand might need work in gnumach (hacking info).

Besides: “The great next stuff” is in the incubator git repo, including (among others) clisp (translators in lisp) and nsmux (dynamically setting translators on files for one command by accessing file,,translator).

Happy hacking!