GNU Mach

Last updated
GNU Mach
Developer(s) GNU Project
Stable release
1.8 [1]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg / 18 December 2016
Repository
Operating system Unix-like
Type Kernel
License GNU General Public License
Website www.gnu.org/software/hurd/microkernel/mach/gnumach.html

GNU Mach is an implementation of the Mach microkernel. It is the default microkernel in the GNU Hurd. GNU Mach runs on IA-32 machines. GNU Mach is maintained by developers on the GNU project. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Contents

History

Early versions of the Hurd were developed on top of CMU's Mach 3.0. [2]

In 1994, CMU stopped working on Mach, and the GNU Project switched to the University of Utah's Mach 4. The kernel known as "GNU Mach" was derived from Mach 4 once Utah stopped development. The first ChangeLog entry by Thomas Bushnell (rather than by a Utah researcher) is from 16 December 1996. [3] [4] [5]

In 2002, Roland McGrath branched the OSKit-Mach branch from GNU Mach 1.2, intending to replace all the device drivers and some of the hardware support with code from OSKit. After the release of GNU Mach 1.3, this branch was intended to become the GNU Mach 2.0 main line; however, as of 2006, OSKit-Mach is not being developed due to lack of activity in OSKit itself. [6] [7] [8] Around 2006, an attempt to replace GNU Hurd's kernel with the Coyotos kernel also ended in failure. [9]

GNU Mach 1.4 was released on 27 September 2013, eleven years after 1.3. [10]

Version history

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Debian</span> Linux distribution based on free and open-source software

Debian, also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software and proprietary software developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of Debian (0.01) was released on September 15, 1993, and its first stable version (1.1) was released on June 17, 1996. The Debian Stable branch is the most popular edition for personal computers and servers. Debian is also the basis for many other distributions, like PureOS, Ubuntu, Pardus, and Linux Mint.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU</span> Free software collection

GNU is an extensive collection of free software, which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operating systems popularly known as Linux. Most of GNU is licensed under the GNU Project's own General Public License (GPL).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU Hurd</span> Operating system kernel designed as a replacement for Unix

GNU Hurd is a collection of microkernel servers written as part of GNU, for the GNU Mach microkernel. It has been under development since 1990 by the GNU Project of the Free Software Foundation, designed as a replacement for the Unix kernel, and released as free software under the GNU General Public License. When the Linux kernel proved to be a viable solution, development of GNU Hurd slowed, at times alternating between stasis and renewed activity and interest.

Mach is a kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University by Richard Rashid and Avie Tevanian to support operating system research, primarily distributed and parallel computing. Mach is often considered one of the earliest examples of a microkernel. However, not all versions of Mach are microkernels. Mach's derivatives are the basis of the operating system kernel in GNU Hurd and of Apple's XNU kernel used in macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU nano</span> Text editor for Unix-like computing systems

GNU nano is a text editor for Unix-like computing systems or operating environments using a command line interface. It emulates the Pico text editor, part of the Pine email client, and also provides additional functionality. Unlike Pico, nano is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Released as free software by Chris Allegretta in 1999, nano became part of the GNU Project in 2001. The logo resembles the lowercase form of the Greek letter Eta (η).

Darwin is the core Unix operating system of macOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS, iPadOS, visionOS, and bridgeOS. It previously existed as an independent open-source operating system, first released by Apple Inc. in 2000. It is composed of code derived from NeXTSTEP, BSD, Mach, and other free software projects' code, as well as code developed by Apple.

L4 is a family of second-generation microkernels, used to implement a variety of types of operating systems (OS), though mostly for Unix-like, Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) compliant types.

The GNU C Library, commonly known as glibc, is the GNU Project's implementation of the C standard library. It is a wrapper around the system calls of the Linux kernel for application use. Despite its name, it now also directly supports C++. It was started in the 1980s by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU operating system.

MkLinux is an open-source software computer operating system begun by the Open Software Foundation Research Institute and Apple Computer in February 1996, to port Linux to the PowerPC platform, and Macintosh computers. The name refers to the Linux kernel being adapted to run as a server hosted on the Mach microkernel, version 3.0.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">XNU</span> Computer operating system kernel

XNU is the computer operating system (OS) kernel developed at Apple Inc. since December 1996 for use in the Mac OS X operating system and released as free and open-source software as part of the Darwin OS, which in addition to macOS is also the basis for the Apple TV Software, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, visionOS, and tvOS OSes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Rashid</span> American computer scientist, Microsoft vice president

Richard Farris Rashid is the founder of Microsoft Research, which he created in 1991. Between 1991 and 2013, as its chief research officer and director, he oversaw the worldwide operations for Microsoft Research which grew to encompass more than 850 researchers and a dozen labs around the world.

A source-code-hosting facility is a file archive and web hosting facility for source code of software, documentation, web pages, and other works, accessible either publicly or privately. They are often used by open-source software projects and other multi-developer projects to maintain revision and version history, or version control. Many repositories provide a bug tracking system, and offer release management, mailing lists, and wiki-based project documentation. Software authors generally retain their copyright when software is posted to a code hosting facilities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mercurial</span> Distributed revision-control tool for software developers

Mercurial is a distributed revision control tool for software developers. It is supported on Microsoft Windows, Linux, and other Unix-like systems, such as FreeBSD and macOS.

TRIX is a network-oriented research operating system developed in the late 1970s at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) by Professor Steve Ward and his research group. It ran on the NuMachine and had remote procedure call functionality built into its kernel, but was otherwise a Version 7 Unix workalike.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tiny C Compiler</span> Compiler for the C programming language

The Tiny C Compiler is an x86, X86-64 and ARM processor C compiler initially written by Fabrice Bellard. It is designed to work for slow computers with little disk space. Windows operating system support was added in version 0.9.23. TCC is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License.

A hybrid kernel is an operating system kernel architecture that attempts to combine aspects and benefits of microkernel and monolithic kernel architectures used in operating systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU Bazaar</span>

GNU Bazaar is a distributed and client–server revision control system sponsored by Canonical.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linux kernel</span> Operating system kernel

The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally written in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU operating system, which was written to be a free (libre) replacement for Unix.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU Guix System</span> Rolling release distribution of the GNU operating system built around the GNU Guix package manager

GNU Guix System or Guix System is a rolling release, free and open source Linux distribution built around the GNU Guix package manager. It enables a declarative operating system configuration and allows system upgrades which the user can rollback. It uses the GNU Shepherd init system and the Linux-libre kernel, with support of the GNU Hurd kernel under development. On February 3, 2015, the Free Software Foundation added the distribution to its list of endorsed free Linux distributions. The Guix package manager and the Guix System drew inspiration from and were based on the Nix package manager and NixOS respectively.

References

  1. "GNU Hurd 0.9, GNU Mach 1.8, GNU MIG 1.8 released". 18 December 2016.
  2. Initial announcement of the Hurd, mentioning Mach 3.0
  3. "GNU". GNU Operating System. Retrieved 16 March 2023.
  4. "Re: Which Mach is GNU Mach?". lists.debian.org.
  5. "hurd/gnumach.git - GNU Mach". git.savannah.gnu.org.
  6. "[hurd] Log of /gnumach/=announce-oskit-mach-1.2.90". cvs.savannah.gnu.org.
  7. 1 2 "GNUmach 1.3 released". lists.gnu.org.
  8. "Re: mach4 & gnumach/oskit..." lists.gnu.org.
  9. "What happened with the Hurd ports to the OSKit Mach / L4 / Coyotos / Viengoos microkernels?". www.gnu.org.
  10. Schwinge, Thomas (2013-09-27). "Happy 30th birthday, GNU! GNU Mach 1.4 released". article.gmane.org. Retrieved 2017-09-21.