GNU Hurd

[Jeroen Dekkers]

On Mon, Mar 18, 2002 at 09:21:38AM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> >Which is totally untrue. I know at least one person who is interested:
> >Marcus Brinkmann. I'm sure there are more people interested in
> >cdrecord for the Hurd. They only didn't told you or me about it.
> 
> Well, this was yesterday and this is  _after_ I wrote this statement.

Yeah

> Let us see if I will get feedback from him so it will be possible to do 
> the port.....

I don't think so as we first have to design the generic SCSI
interfaces AFAIK.

> >I do real work on the Hurd. I have exactly NONE interest in cdrecord,
> >I don't even have a burner!
> 
> If you don't have a burner then you are different from most people.
> 
> >> cdrecord has been #1 of interest for a long time and still is at
> >> rank #3 (but could be at #2 if there were not so many bugs in Linux).
> 
> >So based on freshmeat somebody would first install linux, then MPLayer
> >and then cdrecord? And after that they are going to install glibc,
> >gcc, etc? Or is it just because they can't find the homepage of
> >cdrecord and they use cdrecord to find it and the other homepages are
> >easier to find?
> 
> Go you again are kidding. Nobody is interested to install a new
> version if glibc because it has a new feature because there are no
> killer features added to glibc on a regular base.

Glibc doesn't need a lot of updates because it is good and stable
software. Also the killer features are features were programmers are
interested in, not were users are interested in. Still almost all of
the GNU/Linux users use glibc. I would rather have C library on my
system than a cd burning program.

> However people replace the cdrecord version that comes with their
> e.g. linux dist if it adds features they are interested in.

I do that with every piece of software. That's the exact reason I
never have to use freshmeat, Debian unstable is fresh enough.

> >Now let's base our facts on one of the biggest distribution of
> >software, Debian, instead of mouse clicks of some users. In Debian
> >cdrecord is priority extra, which is the lowest priority. Nobody seems
> >to complain about that although Debian has a lot of users.
> 
> Ask Debian why. Also ask them about their strange method of tracking
>bugs.

The Debian bug tracking system is fine. I don't see much distributions
doing it better. Note that it's actually an internal thing to Debian,
we only have an open organisation.

> Until the end of last year, they listed 'bugs' for cdrecord as still present
> that have been really Linux kernel bugs and have been fixed more then
> 2 years ago.

You should not ask Debian that, you should ask the Debian maintainer of
cdrecord. Debian is a very large project with a lot of
developers. Just don't say that Debian does something if only one
developer of Debian does it. Also we weren't talking about Debian, we
were talking about the popularity of cdrecord. Debian was only an
example because it's a big distribution and I use it.

> >If we look at the popularity contents at
> >http://people.debian.org/~apenwarr/popcon/index.html and specifically
> >http://people.debian.org/~apenwarr/popcon/results/results.otherosfs,
> >we see that only 262 of 1829 individual have cdrecord installed and
> >use it frequently. That's only 14% of the users, not that important.
> 
> This does not look correct to me. While not so many installed machines
> _use_ cdrecord, > 50% if the Linux users (persons) use cdrecord on a
> regular base.

Not even 50% of the Linux users have a burner. At least in the world I
live in. Nor do all the people who have a burner burn cds every
day.

This are _real_ numbers, you only can't face the *facts*. I'm waiting
for your research which tells that more than 50% of the users use
cdrecord. Note that the Debian popularity contents makes a different
between using and having installed. If you only count on 

BTW, 100% of the GNU/Linux users use glibc on a regular base. So do
99% use gzip. I think if we look at the package ported to GNU/Hurd and
the popularity-contents Debian GNU/Hurd isn't doing that bad.

> >What do you call a non-trivial program? I can give some packages
> >ported anyhow: XFree86, ssh, emacs, vim, ruby, python, TeX, ...=20
> 
> ssh  would be a at the border to a non trivial program, while emacs is
> a trivial program from portability perspective.

Emacs isn't a trvial program. It's only nice written so it's
portable, that doesn't make it trivial. Did you ever looked at the
source? It's a mail client, browser, debugger, editor, etc.

> >You still didn't answer my question. Why should I use cdrecord on if I
> >want to do real work? I can do real work without cdrecord. I've done
> >real work for years without cdrecord. 86% of the individuals doing
> >Debian's popularity contents can do real work without cdrecord.
> 
> Most people use CDs for some sort of data exchange and at least back up
> selected stuff for long term storage, that's why I assume that
> most people doing real work use cdrecord.

There are a lot of other ways of making backups. My favourite one is
to use another hard disk.

> >WTF do you think I'm doing? I'm working on it. I make it of interest
> >for potential users. But you are doing to the opposite and try to make
> >the Hurd look bad with spreading your lies. Stop doing that please.
> 
> Sorry but you are spreading lies. You are telling people that HURD is
> better than other OS. 

You are spreading lies. I've never said that. If I did, please give me
the url of the archive where I said that. I'm just going to ignore
your lies from now on.

> If this would be true, many people would use it.

1) The thing you said isn't true.
2) Your conclusion is wrong, GNU/Linux is better than windows still
more people use windows.

> This is why I give you the advise to _make_ HURD superior and then 
> people will just use it.

I don't need your advice. I already found that out about a year
ago. And I give you the advice to stop telling lies and first look if
your guess is right before saying things. Or just mark it as it, like
"I think the Hurd is dead because I haven't heard from it for a long
time." instead of just "the Hurd is dead".

Jeroen Dekkers
-- 
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