Hurd-ng is an effort to build a new, "Next Generation" operating system that preserves the main design goals of the Hurd while fixing some of the Hurd's shortcomings. There is not yet an official roadmap or a concrete specification; indeed, much of the work is research oriented.
These pages try to summarize the major discussions and ideas.
Why ngHurd
This section explains the motivations behind the new design:
- ?Issues with L4 Pistachio
History of the port to another microkernel
Work already done
A critique of the original Hurd is available.
A position paper by Marcus Brinkmann and Neal H. Walfield can be found.
A draft specification of the Hurd-NG interfaces has been, but is no longer, available.
Subjects
Design processus
Concepts
- Security
- ?Capability Based Microkernel
- First-class Receive Buffer
- PowerBox
- What is a Capability
- What is a Constructor
- What is a Spacebank
- Trivial Confinement vs. Constructor vs. Fork
- Copy vs. Revocable Copy vs. Map
- Setuid vs. Constructor
- Hurdish Applications for Persistence
- What's in a Group
- The Polycast Interface
- Permission Bits
- Cancellation Forwarding
Problems to solve
Implementation
- ?Hurd Interafaces
- ?Posix Layer
- System Structure
Use Cases
please move me somewhere better! ?SamMason
Organization
Summaries should obey the following structure:
- if there is a consensus, it is clearly described
- if controversial points remain, there are also described after the consensus
- if no choice has been clearly made, all valid positions are described
- withdrawn and invalid positions (proved wrong, unrealistic, contradictory to some design principle, etc.) should be described only very briefly, and developed in a separate article
Each time a point seems to be overly long with respect to the rest of the article, it should be summarized in place and developed in a separate article.