[kemotep]

In the case of operating systems, do you think 10 or so years of support is not enough?

Brian Lunduke once talked about GNU/Hurd and said they should do the following release cycle:

1. Spend a few months working on it and then declare that the 1.0 release.

2. Spend 2-3 years getting Hurd to work on as many architectures and systems as possible. Get all graphics cards types that you can working. Release 2.0.

3. Spend the next 10-15 years squashing as many bugs as possible. Continue working on getting as many drivers as necessary to get it working on as many platforms as possible. Then release 3.0.

4. At this point be done. For the next 100 years GNU/Hurd 3.0 is it. Just do security and driver updates.

I thought the idea of a “forever” OS was interesting. It would then never become “obsolete”.

[jacquesm]

> In the case of operating systems, do you think 10 or so years of support is not enough?

Yes, I do think that is not enough. An OS should be thought of as scaffolding where parts of it are replaced but never the whole. And preferably while it is running, including all of the core.

[kemotep]

In a way, rolling release linux distros meet your requirements.

[jacquesm]

Still reboots though, doesn't it?

[kemotep]

I know there are features to hotpatch the kernel, don’t know if that’s limited to Red Hat or Ubuntu or if something like Arch can do it too.

If individual packages or services have to restart does not qualify for your requirements then I don’t think any system could truly provide that without having it run multiple instances of each service/itself.

[jacquesm]

I've used QnX and a home grown clone that could do this. In... 1991. Erlang can do it too.

[pierrelf]

Huh never knew that was their plan, such a shame Hurd isn't completed! I wonder if such a vision could be possible with a simpler os like FreeRTOS or similar

[kemotep]

That’s not the actual plan for GNU Hurd that was Brian wishcasting.