Merge branch 'master' of flubber:~hurd-web/hurd-web

1 files changed, 37 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/hurd/status.mdwn b/hurd/status.mdwn
index 1122b703..a22802ff 100644
--- a/hurd/status.mdwn
+++ b/hurd/status.mdwn
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
-[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation,
-Inc."]]
+[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2007, 2008, 2009 Free Software
+Foundation, Inc."]]
 
 [[!meta license="""[[!toggle id="license" text="GFDL 1.2+"]][[!toggleable
 id="license" text="Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
@@ -61,3 +61,38 @@ well would be unfortunate. Moreover, it would lessen the
 possibility that they would want to try the Hurd again in the future.
 
 
+## Usability Reports
+
+### Olaf Buddenhagen, 2009-06-09
+
+> I have been using the Hurd for most of my everyday work for some two
+> years now. Most of the time it's pretty OK, but occasionally programs
+> crash, or the screen session dies, or even the whole system. Also,
+> various programs simply don't work at all, or don't work in certain
+> situations.
+> 
+> While I have learned to work around many of these issues, I don't
+> believe I would be able to use it as my primary system, without having a
+> GNU/Linux system running in parallel, as a fallback for all the stuff
+> that doesn't work on the Hurd.
+> 
+> [...]
+> 
+> One particular problem for desktop use is the fact that while X does
+> work, it works very poorly -- it's not only slow and jerky all the time,
+> but also tends to lock up completely. (At least with the local socket
+> transport... Haven't tried whether forcing TCP works better.)
+> 
+> Note that while many of the stability problems are simply bugs to fix,
+> the system will still be very fragile in the absence of these -- a
+> simple port leak is sufficient to kill it within seconds. This is
+> something that can't be easily solved. Properly fixing this will require
+> a sound resource accounting framework, i.e. very fundamental changes to
+> the system... Though I tend to believe that it could be improved at
+> least partially, at the expense of flexibility, by enforcing certain
+> fixed limits on users, processes etc. like other UNIX systems do.
+> 
+> [...]
+> 
+> [But] unlike a few years back [...] the system is stable enough under
+> load nowadays [...].