user ≠ grandma Linux was written by someone who wanted to use a kernel that took advantage of the MMU in his new 386. One did not exist, and he couldn't practi

user ≠ grandma Linux was written by someone who wanted to use a kernel that took advantage of the MMU in his new 386. One did not exist, and he couldn't practically fork Minix because of draconian licensing issues, so he wrote his own for himself to use. Linux was written by and for a user. Hurd, on the other hand, was designed for several orthogonal ideological reasons, and never really written. There was never a user within sight of it, including its creators.