news/2010: Imported from gnustatus-2011-01.texi.

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+From Olaf Buddenhagen, Arne Babenhauserheide, Thomas Schwinge: Yeah,
+that's quite right: this project is still alive!
+
+According to our mission statement, the goal is creating @emph{a
+general-purpose kernel suitable for the GNU operating system, which is
+viable for everyday use, and gives users and programs as much control
+over their computing environment as possible}.  It has a unique
+multi-server microkernel-based architecture---bringing advanced
+operating system research to the mainstream.  More concretely, it's a
+collection of user-space server processes that run on the GNU Mach
+microkernel.
+
+The Hurd doesn't fully deliver on the @emph{everyday usability} goal
+yet, but it is seeing continuous improvement---and 2010 has been no
+exception.  Let's take a look at the progress throughout the year.
+
+@itemize @bullet
+@item
+Apart from having done a lot of other work, Samuel Thibault, our Jack
+of all trades, merged his development branch that added Xen domU
+support to GNU Mach, which makes it possible to run a GNU/Hurd system
+as a Xen guest.  Development of this started in 2007, and since then
+it has been heavily tested by using it for the Debian GNU/Hurd build
+servers, most of our public GNU/Hurd systems,
+@url{http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/public_hurd_boxen.html}, and the
+Hurd project's wiki web server.
+
+@item
+We had Zheng Da work on a new hardware device driver framework, which
+is based on the Dresden L4 (Fiasco) group's DDE project, and allows
+running modern Linux kernel drivers as user-space server processes.
+Many network cards already work perfectly with this new framework.
+(It has not yet been integrated into the mainstream Hurd code base, so
+it needs to be compiled and set up by hand.)  Other driver classes,
+such as hard disk controllers, will require further work.
+
+@item
+As in the previous years, we again participated in the Google Summer
+of Code 2010.  Olaf Buddenhagen is our main guy for organizing this.
+
+J@'er@'emie Koenig ported the modern Debian Installer to Debian
+GNU/Hurd.  Installation images using the new installer are replacing
+the previous CD images, which were using an installer based on the old
+Debian boot floppies (and running under the Linux kernel)---Philip
+Charles has been maintaining these single-handedly for almost ten
+years!  The new installer images are available from
+@url{http://people.debian.org/~sthibault/hurd-i386/installer/cdimage/}.
+
+Emilio Pozuelo Monfort was investigating specific compatibility
+problems exposed by the extensive test suites coming with some
+software packages.  Emilio's analysis uncovered a number of
+programming errors in the Hurd code, and he fixed several of them.  As
+these typically affected other programs too, this improved stability
+and compatibility in general.
+
+@item
+J@'er@'emie Koenig created a new implementation of a @command{procfs}
+translator, which is considerably more robust and efficient than the
+previous one.  Tools such as @command{top} can now be used without
+problems.
+
+Some other translators (@command{gopherfs}, @command{netio},
+@command{tarfs}) which have been created by external contributors in
+the past have been fixed up by Manuel Menal, and packaged in Debian.
+Thus, some of the results of Hurd's extensible architecture are now
+easier to access, and these updated translators can serve as examples
+for other developers to implement their own ideas.
+
+@item
+In addition to various general stability, compatibility, and
+portability fixes, several people (Samuel Thibault, Pino Toscano,
+Emilio Pozuelo Monfort, and others) have been working on fixing issues
+with specific Debian packages.  So far, about 68% of all Debian
+packages are also available for Debian GNU/Hurd.
+
+@item
+Michael Walker started the Arch Hurd distribution, and together with
+other enthusiastic Arch developers (Allan McRae, Matthias Lanzinger,
+Alexander Preisinger, Stephen Gilles, Diego Nieto Cid) they got it
+working in an amazingly short amount of time, both as an installable
+system, and a live CD.  So now there is a choice between two
+well-featured distributions for the Hurd.  These new people of course
+also help forwarding Hurd development in general---Diego in particular
+contributed various patches to the Hurd console and other components.
+
+@item
+Carl Fredrik Hammar finished and presented his thesis, ``Generalizing
+mobility for the Hurd'',
+@url{http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-01/msg00078.html},
+and passed with distinction.
+@end itemize
+
+This is a very short digest of what happened in the last year.  You
+can read our regular ``Month of the Hurd'' at
+@url{http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/news.html}, or by subscribing to
+our RSS feed at @url{http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/index.rss}.
+
+If you are interested, for example, in doing a university project on a
+multi-server microkernel-based operating system, or if you are
+interested in contributing to Hurd development in general, please see
+@url{http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/contributing.html}.  Or just
+talk to us at @email{bug-hurd@@gnu.org} or the @code{#hurd} IRC
+channel on freenode.