A month of the Hurd: DDE driver, X.org / libpciaccess, FOSDEM, and Google Summer of Code 2010.

A bit late, but here it is finally: the MotH for February, 2010.

This month saw the first running and testable DDE driver by Zheng Da, with which he begins to reap the benefits of porting DDE to the Hurd -- essentially, allowing us to use current Linux device drivers.

Samuel Thibault pushed a libpciaccess x86 backend to X.Org:

This adds support on x86 for OSes that do not have a PCI interface, tinkering with I/O ports, and makes use of it on GNU/Hurd.

In the course of this, he also got commit access to X.org, so it should be easier now to get further Hurd-related patches applied.

As announced in our previous news blurb, at FOSDEM, Bas did his presentation of Iris, a new capability-based microkernel OS in the Embedded Developer Room, and Olaf illustrated Why is Anyone Still Working on the GNU Hurd?, and presented his work of Porting KGI graphics drivers from Linux to GNU Hurd, in the Alt-OS Developer Room.

In Mikel Olasagasti's words:

The room was full and people was "standing-up" for the talk. Some people even couldn't enter to the room (+20?).

Antrik [Olaf] made a good job. Was nice for the crowd to see Hurd running X, slow but working.

The regular IRC meeting schedule has been changed to Wednesdays, 11:00 UTC; see the IRC page for details.

Last, but not least, it is time again to think about the Google Summer of Code. In 2007, the GNU Hurd had one successful project, in 2008 five of them, 2009 saw another one, so we obviously plan to make it five projects again this year. We already have dozens of ideas online, and will add yet more -- also based on YOUR suggestions and wishes!

So, if you're a student, and interested in working on the GNU Hurd, please join in; browse through the GSoC pages, and don't be shy to contact us!