3 ms·

Ask HN: Has anyone used a HURD-based system before?

2 points by bananicorn 9y ago

I'm just curious, maybe someone tried it for development purposes, or just to mess around? Honestly, if Arch/Hurd was ready, I'd have tried it myself. The most usable distro is probably Debian/HURD, has anyone used that, and if yes - is there an immediately noticeable difference in how the system performs/feels? And is it really that big of a deal that it's only 32 bit at the moment? (Yeah it limits the maximum usable RAM, but otherwise?)

qubex 9y ago
Yes, I've messed with it (most recently in a virtual machine about a year ago). But then again, in the same time-frame I've also "messed with" Plan9, BeOS-recreation Haiku, and several other oddballs. Hurd works, but then again so do a lot of other things. I very much like the philosophy of micro-kernels and everything-else-implemented-by-a-server, but in practice (perhaps just because of unlucky timing combined with performance penalties) that hasn't (yet?) caught on. (I used the Debian distribution.)
- bananicorn 9y ago
  Did you install it on hardware or in a VM? And damn, I've always wanted to give Plan9 a shot too, mainly just because I really like the "Everything is a file" approach^^ edit: formatting maybe -> mainly
  - qubex 9y ago
    > Did you install it in hardware or in a VM? >> (most recently in a virtual machine about a year ago)