summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
-rw-r--r--community/weblogs/ArneBab/niches_for_the_hurd.mdwn137
1 files changed, 137 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/community/weblogs/ArneBab/niches_for_the_hurd.mdwn b/community/weblogs/ArneBab/niches_for_the_hurd.mdwn
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..361f4143
--- /dev/null
+++ b/community/weblogs/ArneBab/niches_for_the_hurd.mdwn
@@ -0,0 +1,137 @@
+Niches for the Hurd
+===================
+
+We did a search for niches where the Hurd is *the biggest fish in the pond*.
+
+This was search was segmented into four distinct phases, three of them major:
+
+- Brainstorm
+- Reality check: can already do vs. could be used for
+- Turn ideas into applications
+- Find a compromise -> About which niches should we talk in the wiki?
+
+Brainstorm
+----------
+
+- Tinkerers who like its design.
+- Give back power to users: arbitrary mounts, subhurds
+- Nice features: dpkg -iO ftp://foo/bar/*.deb
+- multicore-systems
+- All-in-one out-of-the-box distro running a webserver for crash-proof
+operation.
+- Having a _complete_ GNU System
+- operating system study purposes as its done with minix
+
+------
+
+Here's one which just got to my mind:
+
+- Simpler virtual computing environments - no need to setup XEN, everyone can
+just open up his/her computer for someone else by creating a new user account,
+and the other one can login and easily adapt the system for his/her own needs.
+If most systems just differ by the translators setup on them, people could
+even transfer their whole environment from one computer to another one without
+needing root access or more root interaction than creating a new user account.
+"I want my tools" -> "no problem, just setup your translators"
+
+------
+
+One important use is for very technical people, who don't always go with
+standard solutions, but rather use new approaches to best solve their
+problems, and will often find traditional kernels too limiting.
+
+There is also the whole area I called "advanced lightweight
+virtualization" (see
+http://tri-ceps.blogspot.com/2007/10/advanced-lightweight-virtualization.html
+), i.e. the ability to create various kinds of interesting
+subenvironments. Many use cases are covered by much bigger fish; but the
+flexibility we offer here could still be interesting: I think the middle
+grounds we cover between directly running applications, and full
+isolation through containers or VMs, are quite unique. This could
+simplify management of demanding applications for example, by partially
+isolating them from other applications and the main system, and thus
+reducing incompatibilities. Creating lightweight software appliances
+sounds like an interesting option.
+
+Another interesting aspect is application development: With the easily
+customized/extended system functionality, and the ability to contain
+such customizations in subenvironments, I believe that Hurd offers a
+good platform for much more efficient development of complex
+applications. Application developers can just introduce the desired
+mechanisms on a very low level, instead of building around existing
+abstractions. The extensible filesystem in particular seems extremely
+helpful as a powerful, intuitive and transparent communication
+mechanism, which allows creating truly modular applications.
+
+While I believe this can be applied to any kind of applications, I'm
+personally most interested in more efficient and powerful desktop
+environments -- these considerations are in fact what got me seriously
+interested in the Hurd.
+
+Even more specifically, I've done most considerations (though by far not
+all) on modular web browsing environments. Those interested can read up
+some of my thoughts on this:
+
+
+http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_name=20080909073154.GB821%40alien.local
+
+(Just skip the text mode browsing stuff -- the relevant part is the long
+monologue at the end... I really should put these ideas into my blog.)
+
+
+
+
+Reality check
+-------------
+
+Check which of the ideas can already be done easily with the Hurd in its current
+state, which ones are a bit more complex but already possible, which ones need a bit
+of coding (could be accomplished in a few months judging from the current speed of
+development), which ones need a lot of work (or fundamental changes) and which ones
+aren't possible.
+
+### Already possible and easy
+
+### Already possible but complex or underdocumented
+
+### Need a few month of coding
+
+### Need a lot of coding or fundamental changes
+
+### Unfeasible ideas
+
+
+Applications
+------------
+
+A minor phase, which will surely be interleaved with the others: Making the ideas
+tangible to turn them into ways how people can use the Hurd.
+
+"Hey, look, this is the Hurd. You can use it like this to do that which you can't do
+as well/easily/elegantly in any other way."
+
+### Applications for private use
+
+### Applications for companies
+
+
+Compromise
+----------
+
+For each niche:
+
+- How many additional programmers can the Hurd get in this niche?
+- How does choosing this niche limit the flexibility of further development?
+- Can we easily move on to conquering the next niche once we got this one?
+- What should the Hurd accomplish on the long term? Which possible niches help that?
+
+Each participant:
+
+- Give your personal priorities to the niches:
+ * Must -> all of these of all developers must be included;
+ remember that at most 3 to 4 ideas can be conveyed in any text.
+ * Should -> The ones with the most "shoulds" will be included.
+
+("must", because in a community people can do what they perceive as important, and
+telling someone to stop what he's doing is no option (in my opinion))
+