10 ms·

Debian GNU/Hurd 2025 released

233 points by jrepinc 1y ago

lenerdenator 1y ago
Dead link, at least for me. ... also, they're still working on Hurd?
- em3rgent0rdr 1y ago
  http://web.archive.org/web/20250810064049/https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2025-08/msg00008.html http://web.archive.org/web/20250810064049/https://lists.gnu....
- numpad0 1y ago
  lists.gnu.org. 1800 IN A 209.51.188.17 17.0-24.188.51.209.in-addr.arpa. 1800 IN PTR lists.gnu.org. 64 bytes from 209.51.188.17: icmp_seq=1 ttl=42 time=219 ms curl: (7) Failed to connect to 209.51.188.17 port 443 after 208 ms: Couldn't connect to server curl: (7) Failed to connect to 209.51.188.17 port 80 after 212 ms: Couldn't connect to server ssh hey__your_http_is_down@209.51.188.17 The authenticity of host '209.51.188.17 (209.51.188.17)' can't be established. ED25519 key fingerprint is SHA256:fKT2Sr7vshZxNytNKcnQgXhqtDYptpayjVTa1upy46w.
- JdeBP 1y ago
  You can read the announcement on the WWW archive of the debian-hurd mailing list, instead. * https://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2025/08/msg00038.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2025/08/msg00038.html
alhazrod 1y ago
I tried to get a copy of GNU Hurd via git a few weeks ago and it didn’t work. Can someone post a working repository link?
- octrc 1y ago
  https://git.sceen.net/hurd/hurd.git https://git.sceen.net/hurd/hurd.git ref. https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/source_repositories.html#index1h2 https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/source_repositories.html#i...
cultofmetatron 1y ago
To think Linus wrote linux to be a "good enough" solution until hurd was ready. The entire hurd system is a literal metaphor for how waiting till you're perfect means you'll never be good enough. At the risk of getting downvoted, I think hurd is cooked at this point. It certainly has some solid ideas that could live on in a modern system. They should retry rewriting it in rust (or zig) and at least have the opportunity to catch mindshare with new engineers just dabbling in systems engineering.
- raverbashing 1y ago
  GNU mentality in a nutshell Also I can't remember any more recent GNU projects that were successful
  - tombert 1y ago
    I guess it sort of depends on how you define "success"; there's plenty of projects that still have some development and active users. TeXMacs was release in the late 90's (I think) and it's pretty neat and I think has at least some user base, and I think GNU Parallel was released in the mid 2000s and I know a number of people who use that (including myself).
  - spookie 1y ago
    Jami, or Taler come to mind. The latter just released, so... Yeah. https://www.taler.net/en/news/2025-01.html https://www.taler.net/en/news/2025-01.html
    - ryukafalz 1y ago
      Guix as well. It's very good.
    - Karrot_Kream 1y ago
      I've never had success getting Jami working FWIW.
  - goku12 1y ago
tombert 1y ago
I still haven't used Hurd, and at this point with the ridiculous diversity in hardware for desktop and laptops I don't think I could realistically use it for anything outside of playing with it in a virtual machine or something. Still, a part of me wishes we lived in the alternative universe where Hurd had taken over the world instead of Linux. I don't know much about kernel design so I'm speaking out of my ass here, but I've always thought that the microkernel design was more elegant than the monolithic thing we ended up with. I don't know that the alternate universe would be "better", and maybe realistically a design like Hurd would never be able to take over the world like Linux, but it always seemed cooler to me. I honestly didn't really realize that they were still working on Hurd. Does anyone here use it for anything?
- asveikau 1y ago
  I seem to recall the Hurd people talking about cool scenarios like filesystem drivers written entirely in user mode that don't require root. Something like that. I booted it on real hardware sometime in the early 2000s, and it worked but was very anticlimactic. I do know that the Mach microkernel they based it on (also the basis for Apple's XNU kernel) is considered dated. Later microkernels are supposed to have better performance.
  - tombert 1y ago
    Yeah, that's what I've always thought was interesting about microkernels; the ability to have a lot more stuff in user space always seemed like the obvious "correct" direction to me. I played with RedoxOS a bit in a virtual machine a few years ago [1], and it seemed cool, so maybe that can be the logical successor to something like Hurd. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedoxOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedoxOS
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - dietr1ch 1y ago
      Oh, I thought that was going to die shortly after Jeremy moved to System76, but it didn't, - https://www.redox-os.org/news/ https://www.redox-os.org/news/
riffic 1y ago
I think of Plan 9 practically every day but I'm only reminded approximately once every few years to the existence of Hurd.
- tombert 1y ago
  Genuine question, as someone who has only ever played with Inferno and Plan 9 in virtual machines and only for brief periods of time in the process: what does Plan 9 actually buy you? Like, I've read about how you can mount lots of things like filesystems and that sounds kind of neat but that also seemed like it might obscure latency and make things ridiculously slow, though it's entirely likely that I am misunderstanding how things work.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
    Forcing everything into the single abstraction of the filesystem lets do useful things with less trouble than other systems. As an example: Plan 9 doesn't have any use for containers because in its world chroot is exhaustive. You don't need special namespaces to control ex. network access, because network access goes through a filesystem in your chroot.
    - project2501a 1y ago
      So, what you are saying is we need a cat with a phat wallet to fund development on the thing and make it sleek. It would really be a real competitor with linux in the server market.
      - tombert 1y ago
        Maybe, though what I was trying to get at with my comment still isn't really addressed. It seems like if you're making everything a filesystem and making it so that the OS doesn't care about where the filesystem is, it can be very easy for latency costs to pile up. I really should properly play with it, but it always seemed to me that it has the potential to add milliseconds of cost to each operation and that could be very slow.
ants_everywhere 1y ago
It would be cool to have a Hurd project with a verified microkernel like seL4. AI is getting good enough to help with the verification process and having a hardened kernel would guard a bit better than the current strategy of using containers everywhere.
- butterisgood 1y ago
  I don't know why this got downvoted... Hurd was indeed investigating L4 as an alternative microkernel for some time. https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/history/port_to_another_microkernel.html https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/history/port_to_another_mi... Neal Walfield was working on a new microkernel as well: https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/microkernel/viengoos.html https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/microkernel/viengoos.html
  - ants_everywhere 1y ago
    I'm aware of that post! I did a video looking at the GNU Hurd and I believe it came up there. It definitely would not be a trivial amount of work. Honestly, I think the downvotes were for mentioning AI may have a role in validation. LLMs are increasingly being explored in the theorem prover space, but it's still controversial to talk of them approvingly on some HN threads.
    - butterisgood 1y ago
      I've worked a fair amount with LLMs from a code generation perspective, and to be honest, I find them often to be better at reading and explaining code to a human than generating good code. It's an interesting idea to think that LLMs could be used to not only explain the code but test the potentially tricky corner cases. I'm pretty sure LLMs are here to stay, and we're just going to have to learn the best ways to work with them.
- snvzz 1y ago
  >It would be cool to have a Hurd project with a verified microkernel like seL4. There's Genode[0]. Relative to the hurd, its design is much more advanced and it supports a range of modern microkernels including seL4. 0. https://genode.org/ https://genode.org/
a3w 1y ago
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1508/ https://xkcd.com/1508/
- jraph 1y ago
  Off topic: this is from April 6, 2015; I'm impressed at the Elon Musk project guess. I would not discard someone's guess of some xOS appearing around 2028-2030 to quickly today.
JdeBP 1y ago
There are "they"s coming up repeatedly in this discussion. I think that it's important to remember that Debian Hurd is not some massive project with thousands of anonymous people behind it. Like Tribblix and Peter Tribble, Debian Hurd's driving force is someone whom you can name: Samuel Thibault. And although there are a few others that appear on the debian-hurd mailing list from time to time, it is amply clear that this is one of those (many) projects with a core group of very few dedicated people, with very limited resources for development and testing. There is no many hands making light work, here. This isn't Debian as you may know it for other kernels. (-: * https://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2025/07/maillist.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2025/07/maillist.html So, in some ways, if microkernels interest you, Debian Hurd is a place to contribute where the ground has yet to be completely trodden.
ofalkaed 1y ago
I have not followed Hurd since ~2010 when development stalled, what is the purpose of Hurd at this point? Is it just hobbyists having fun and exploring the possibilities or are they still trying to become a viable option or something else or a little of a bunch of things? I think I will try installing Debian GNU/Hurd on an old laptop, always wanted to play with Hurd but I never succeeded in getting any computer I had to boot up with it and never had interest in running OSes in VMs. Years ago I was met with derisive laughter from everyone when I said Haiku would hit 1.0 before Hurd. I also said that Haiku would beat linux to the opensource desktop widely used by the average person who is not concerned with opensource, but I think that was mostly stirring the pot because of the reaction to my previous statement. All these years later and Haiku hitting 1.0 seems inevitable and even the idea of it becoming a widely adopted opensource OS does not seem that far fetched. I would like to see Hurd hit 1.0, but I am fairly skeptical at this point. I suppose ChromeOS/linux beat Haiku to the punch for the opensource desktop, but I think I will stick to my guns on this one and play semantics, many in the linux/oss view ChromeOS as linux/oss in name only. A cheat but I think Haiku has earned it. Edit: Forgot that Chomium was opensource but ChromeOS is not, so I guess I had no need to play semantics.
- SlowTao 1y ago
  I love how Haiku feels like it has its feet in two places at once. That it is both in the year 2000 and 2040 at the same time. It does feel a lot more user ready than a lot of alternatives. Although I did find it funny that on their last release a big milestone is that it can now compile code a little faster than half the speed of Linux. So performance is still lacking but gaining. Considering their team size compared with Linux, that is a big achievement.
  - ofalkaed 1y ago
    I think things like compilation speed are fairly low on their priority list because they are focusing on the user and not the developer, the people who are not going to bother compiling anything and want the OS to be something they never have to think about. Lack of focus on the user seems a big part of why I think linux has failed to gain a real foothold, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that the linux community pushed too hard long before it viable for that use case and now there are alot of people out there who tried linux a decade ago and remember spending a lot of time fiddling with their system and jumping through hoops instead of just using the computer for those things they use a computer for. Some distros are viable these days for the average person, but a lot of those average people have a bad taste left in their mouth from when they tried <my favorite distro is perfect for you!>.
kristopolous 1y ago
Is it still XNU/OSF-1 inspired? Are people running it on actual metal?
- fithisux 1y ago
  https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-5490-machina-lessons-and-insights-from-reimplementing-the-mach-microkernel/ https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-5490-mach...
butterisgood 1y ago
Interesting! I ran some version of Hurd back in 1998, with ip masquerading and forwarding through a dial-up capable Linux box. And now it's 64bit!?
aussiegreenie 1y ago
Has anyone compared the HarmonyOS NEXT to Debian Hurd? HarmonyOS NEXT is the world's most widely used microkernel system, reportedly used on approximately 800 million systems.
- ConanRus 1y ago
  yeah. one is a communist's malware, another one is a closed source commercial os
QuiCasseRien 1y ago
Is any new operating system is able to emerge nowadays ? each week there are (in C, in Rust, in JS...) What are their hardware support ? at best they can run in a virtual machine End of debate.
- johannes1234321 1y ago
  First: Hurd isn't a new operating system. It's a decades old project from last millennium. And then: Doing research in operating systems serves a lot of purposes. For some it's just fun. For some it's experimenting which may lead to ideas which may be incorporated into other OSs later, where eit is a lot simpler to do in a small kernel. For some it is an attempt to take over the world, few of those will, but maybe one might. At least for a small part of the world.
- fithisux 1y ago
  This is not correct. Look at what is happening in the Amiga retrocomputing area. Some of them have Linux support along with AmigaOS/Morphos and Aros. Pretty succesful (expensive though) because they do not release 1000 different systems each year but 2-3. Also, you do not have to support every system. For example if they support these cheap n150 mini pcs, I am more than fine. Something common. Macos runs fine because it works in a specific space.
- Twirrim 1y ago
  Hurd predates Linux by about a year, but was under stop/start development for several years before that too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd It's as old as dirt, in computing terms. It was intended to be the final part of a fully GNU based operating system, everything else having been created by that stage. Stallman et. al. have promised since the late 80s that this would be the future, and at various stages promised that it will be ready for production work within the next year (or two). Like any promises made by Elon Musk, everyone in the tech industry has long since learned to ignore them. Maybe some day it'll be done, but I'm highly skeptical it has any chance of building up the momentum it needs.
TheAmazingRace 1y ago
Huh... the 64-bit release is news to me. I thought GNU Hurd was 32-bit only?
- goku12 1y ago
  > 64bit support is now complete, with the same archive coverage as i386 (actually a bit more since some packages are 64b-only) > This 64b support is completely using userland disk drivers from NetBSD thanks to the Rump layer. That's exciting news! I know it's a bit much to get excited about Hurd. But this is a big milestone. And though I'm not holding my breath, I really want to see how far they can take it. I'm not ready to write them off yet. I didn't notice that until I saw your comment. Thanks!
  - TheAmazingRace 1y ago
    No problem! I just figured it was worth a mention… because this alone renewed interest in GNU Hurd for me in a huge way.
  - bikoxemepojiy 1y ago
    I found that it's a bit surprising that the 64-bit support comes from NetBSD. My initial thought was that porting code from Linux would be a more direct path, especially since a major goal for GNU Hurd is compatibility with the Debian archive.
    - lproven 1y ago
      I have no special insight, but I know of 2 possible factors: * the NetBSD "rump" unikernel is out there: https://rumpkernel.github.io/ https://rumpkernel.github.io/ https://thamizhelango.medium.com/netbsds-rump-kernel-framework-a-deep-dive-into-modular-kernel-architecture-b19e5aaad06d https://thamizhelango.medium.com/netbsds-rump-kernel-framewo... * Secondly, this exists because NetBSD is much much smaller and simpler than Linux, which has undergone decades of enterprise-focussed optimisation.
- rurban 1y ago
fithisux 1y ago
There is an attempt to rewrite GNU Mach https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-5490-machina-lessons-and-insights-from-reimplementing-the-mach-microkernel/ https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-5490-mach...
snvzz 1y ago
The HURD has been around for a while, and its architecture is archaic. It's from a world where Mach is the microkernel, and thus microkernels are slow. There's many more options[0] these days. 0. https://www.microkernel.info/ https://www.microkernel.info/
guerrilla 1y ago
If you're interested in what's going on with GNU in general, GUIX is awesome. It's a package manager like Nix but purely GNU (using GNU Guile scheme). It's developed in tandem with the GNU Shepherd init system (instead of sysvinit/systemd/openrc/etc.) and there are distributions based on GNU Hurd kernel (or the Linux-libre kernel). Wikipedia has a pretty good rundown [3] but I recommend booting up a VM image. It's actually quite beautiful. I love the purity of GNOME on a GNU/Hurd system with GUIX and Shepherd where the whole thing is configured in guile[4]. There's just something very aesthetic about the combination. I wish I could use it as my daily driver. 1. https://guix.gnu.org/ https://guix.gnu.org/ 2. https://www.gnu.org/software/shepherd/manual/shepherd.html https://www.gnu.org/software/shepherd/manual/shepherd.html 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Guix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Guix 4. https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/ https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/
- Y_Y 1y ago
  I'm totally with you, though would note that running Hurd as your main kernel is difficult, but running childhurds on your linux kernel is fun and profitable. https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2020/childhurds-and-substitutes/ https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2020/childhurds-and-substitutes... Obviously I'm crazy, because I use Emacs with EXWM as my shell, but IMHO it's perfectly capable of being a "daily driver" already.
- sdsd 1y ago
  I'm so excited to try GUIX. Right now I'm on Apple Silicon so I can't get it to work even in a VM, but the second I've got an x64 ISA computer I'm using GUIX
- aidenn0 1y ago
  One of these days I'll try guix (currently on NixOS). Two things that hold me back (aside from the obvious friction of switching): 1. nixpkgs is huge. If what I need isn't in 25.05, it's in unstable 2. I've been programming in Common Lisp for so long that I can't help but write buggy code any time I try writing in a lisp-1. It seems like it should be such a minor thing, but I invariably inadvertently shadow a function I'm using with some other variable. [edit] I forgot my third issue, which is all of my preferred setup options seem to be further off beaten path in Guix than NixOS (e.g. plasma, zfs)
gnerd00 1y ago
one of the GNU/Hurd maintainers is a neighbor .. he is over 70 now, with degree in physics from a top-ranked US university, most of his days are spent dealing with serious health problems.
- flykespice 1y ago
  How much is his role on the project taking in consideration his age? I want to know whether I will be senile enough to continue contributing to project when I reach that age
- brcmthrowaway 1y ago
  What was their day job?
- pabs3 1y ago
  Which maintainer? Would like to save their websites to archive.org if they have any.
thebitstick 1y ago
Debian GNU/kFreeBSD should be revived.
xvilka 1y ago
At this point investing time (or money) into RedoxOS[1] would be more rational. [1] https://redox-os.org/ https://redox-os.org/

233 points by jrepinc 1y ago

lenerdenator 1y ago

Dead link, at least for me. ... also, they're still working on Hurd?

em3rgent0rdr 1y ago
http://web.archive.org/web/20250810064049/https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2025-08/msg00008.html http://web.archive.org/web/20250810064049/https://lists.gnu....
numpad0 1y ago
lists.gnu.org. 1800 IN A 209.51.188.17 17.0-24.188.51.209.in-addr.arpa. 1800 IN PTR lists.gnu.org. 64 bytes from 209.51.188.17: icmp_seq=1 ttl=42 time=219 ms curl: (7) Failed to connect to 209.51.188.17 port 443 after 208 ms: Couldn't connect to server curl: (7) Failed to connect to 209.51.188.17 port 80 after 212 ms: Couldn't connect to server ssh hey__your_http_is_down@209.51.188.17 The authenticity of host '209.51.188.17 (209.51.188.17)' can't be established. ED25519 key fingerprint is SHA256:fKT2Sr7vshZxNytNKcnQgXhqtDYptpayjVTa1upy46w.
JdeBP 1y ago
You can read the announcement on the WWW archive of the debian-hurd mailing list, instead. * https://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2025/08/msg00038.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2025/08/msg00038.html

alhazrod 1y ago

I tried to get a copy of GNU Hurd via git a few weeks ago and it didn’t work. Can someone post a working repository link?

octrc 1y ago
https://git.sceen.net/hurd/hurd.git https://git.sceen.net/hurd/hurd.git ref. https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/source_repositories.html#index1h2 https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/source_repositories.html#i...

cultofmetatron 1y ago

To think Linus wrote linux to be a "good enough" solution until hurd was ready. The entire hurd system is a literal metaphor for how waiting till you're perfect means you'll never be good enough. At the risk of getting downvoted, I think hurd is cooked at this point. It certainly has some solid ideas that could live on in a modern system. They should retry rewriting it in rust (or zig) and at least have the opportunity to catch mindshare with new engineers just dabbling in systems engineering.

raverbashing 1y ago
GNU mentality in a nutshell Also I can't remember any more recent GNU projects that were successful
- tombert 1y ago
  I guess it sort of depends on how you define "success"; there's plenty of projects that still have some development and active users. TeXMacs was release in the late 90's (I think) and it's pretty neat and I think has at least some user base, and I think GNU Parallel was released in the mid 2000s and I know a number of people who use that (including myself).
- spookie 1y ago
  Jami, or Taler come to mind. The latter just released, so... Yeah. https://www.taler.net/en/news/2025-01.html https://www.taler.net/en/news/2025-01.html
  - ryukafalz 1y ago
    Guix as well. It's very good.
  - Karrot_Kream 1y ago
    I've never had success getting Jami working FWIW.
- goku12 1y ago

tombert 1y ago

I still haven't used Hurd, and at this point with the ridiculous diversity in hardware for desktop and laptops I don't think I could realistically use it for anything outside of playing with it in a virtual machine or something. Still, a part of me wishes we lived in the alternative universe where Hurd had taken over the world instead of Linux. I don't know much about kernel design so I'm speaking out of my ass here, but I've always thought that the microkernel design was more elegant than the monolithic thing we ended up with. I don't know that the alternate universe would be "better", and maybe realistically a design like Hurd would never be able to take over the world like Linux, but it always seemed cooler to me. I honestly didn't really realize that they were still working on Hurd. Does anyone here use it for anything?

asveikau 1y ago
I seem to recall the Hurd people talking about cool scenarios like filesystem drivers written entirely in user mode that don't require root. Something like that. I booted it on real hardware sometime in the early 2000s, and it worked but was very anticlimactic. I do know that the Mach microkernel they based it on (also the basis for Apple's XNU kernel) is considered dated. Later microkernels are supposed to have better performance.
- tombert 1y ago
  Yeah, that's what I've always thought was interesting about microkernels; the ability to have a lot more stuff in user space always seemed like the obvious "correct" direction to me. I played with RedoxOS a bit in a virtual machine a few years ago [1], and it seemed cool, so maybe that can be the logical successor to something like Hurd. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedoxOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedoxOS
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - dietr1ch 1y ago
    Oh, I thought that was going to die shortly after Jeremy moved to System76, but it didn't, - https://www.redox-os.org/news/ https://www.redox-os.org/news/

riffic 1y ago

I think of Plan 9 practically every day but I'm only reminded approximately once every few years to the existence of Hurd.

tombert 1y ago
Genuine question, as someone who has only ever played with Inferno and Plan 9 in virtual machines and only for brief periods of time in the process: what does Plan 9 actually buy you? Like, I've read about how you can mount lots of things like filesystems and that sounds kind of neat but that also seemed like it might obscure latency and make things ridiculously slow, though it's entirely likely that I am misunderstanding how things work.
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
  Forcing everything into the single abstraction of the filesystem lets do useful things with less trouble than other systems. As an example: Plan 9 doesn't have any use for containers because in its world chroot is exhaustive. You don't need special namespaces to control ex. network access, because network access goes through a filesystem in your chroot.
  - project2501a 1y ago
    So, what you are saying is we need a cat with a phat wallet to fund development on the thing and make it sleek. It would really be a real competitor with linux in the server market.
    - tombert 1y ago
      Maybe, though what I was trying to get at with my comment still isn't really addressed. It seems like if you're making everything a filesystem and making it so that the OS doesn't care about where the filesystem is, it can be very easy for latency costs to pile up. I really should properly play with it, but it always seemed to me that it has the potential to add milliseconds of cost to each operation and that could be very slow.

ants_everywhere 1y ago

It would be cool to have a Hurd project with a verified microkernel like seL4. AI is getting good enough to help with the verification process and having a hardened kernel would guard a bit better than the current strategy of using containers everywhere.

butterisgood 1y ago
I don't know why this got downvoted... Hurd was indeed investigating L4 as an alternative microkernel for some time. https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/history/port_to_another_microkernel.html https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/history/port_to_another_mi... Neal Walfield was working on a new microkernel as well: https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/microkernel/viengoos.html https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/microkernel/viengoos.html
- ants_everywhere 1y ago
  I'm aware of that post! I did a video looking at the GNU Hurd and I believe it came up there. It definitely would not be a trivial amount of work. Honestly, I think the downvotes were for mentioning AI may have a role in validation. LLMs are increasingly being explored in the theorem prover space, but it's still controversial to talk of them approvingly on some HN threads.
  - butterisgood 1y ago
    I've worked a fair amount with LLMs from a code generation perspective, and to be honest, I find them often to be better at reading and explaining code to a human than generating good code. It's an interesting idea to think that LLMs could be used to not only explain the code but test the potentially tricky corner cases. I'm pretty sure LLMs are here to stay, and we're just going to have to learn the best ways to work with them.
snvzz 1y ago
>It would be cool to have a Hurd project with a verified microkernel like seL4. There's Genode[0]. Relative to the hurd, its design is much more advanced and it supports a range of modern microkernels including seL4. 0. https://genode.org/ https://genode.org/

a3w 1y ago

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1508/ https://xkcd.com/1508/

jraph 1y ago
Off topic: this is from April 6, 2015; I'm impressed at the Elon Musk project guess. I would not discard someone's guess of some xOS appearing around 2028-2030 to quickly today.

JdeBP 1y ago

There are "they"s coming up repeatedly in this discussion. I think that it's important to remember that Debian Hurd is not some massive project with thousands of anonymous people behind it. Like Tribblix and Peter Tribble, Debian Hurd's driving force is someone whom you can name: Samuel Thibault. And although there are a few others that appear on the debian-hurd mailing list from time to time, it is amply clear that this is one of those (many) projects with a core group of very few dedicated people, with very limited resources for development and testing. There is no many hands making light work, here. This isn't Debian as you may know it for other kernels. (-: * https://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2025/07/maillist.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2025/07/maillist.html So, in some ways, if microkernels interest you, Debian Hurd is a place to contribute where the ground has yet to be completely trodden.

ofalkaed 1y ago

I have not followed Hurd since ~2010 when development stalled, what is the purpose of Hurd at this point? Is it just hobbyists having fun and exploring the possibilities or are they still trying to become a viable option or something else or a little of a bunch of things? I think I will try installing Debian GNU/Hurd on an old laptop, always wanted to play with Hurd but I never succeeded in getting any computer I had to boot up with it and never had interest in running OSes in VMs. Years ago I was met with derisive laughter from everyone when I said Haiku would hit 1.0 before Hurd. I also said that Haiku would beat linux to the opensource desktop widely used by the average person who is not concerned with opensource, but I think that was mostly stirring the pot because of the reaction to my previous statement. All these years later and Haiku hitting 1.0 seems inevitable and even the idea of it becoming a widely adopted opensource OS does not seem that far fetched. I would like to see Hurd hit 1.0, but I am fairly skeptical at this point. I suppose ChromeOS/linux beat Haiku to the punch for the opensource desktop, but I think I will stick to my guns on this one and play semantics, many in the linux/oss view ChromeOS as linux/oss in name only. A cheat but I think Haiku has earned it. Edit: Forgot that Chomium was opensource but ChromeOS is not, so I guess I had no need to play semantics.

SlowTao 1y ago
I love how Haiku feels like it has its feet in two places at once. That it is both in the year 2000 and 2040 at the same time. It does feel a lot more user ready than a lot of alternatives. Although I did find it funny that on their last release a big milestone is that it can now compile code a little faster than half the speed of Linux. So performance is still lacking but gaining. Considering their team size compared with Linux, that is a big achievement.
- ofalkaed 1y ago
  I think things like compilation speed are fairly low on their priority list because they are focusing on the user and not the developer, the people who are not going to bother compiling anything and want the OS to be something they never have to think about. Lack of focus on the user seems a big part of why I think linux has failed to gain a real foothold, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that the linux community pushed too hard long before it viable for that use case and now there are alot of people out there who tried linux a decade ago and remember spending a lot of time fiddling with their system and jumping through hoops instead of just using the computer for those things they use a computer for. Some distros are viable these days for the average person, but a lot of those average people have a bad taste left in their mouth from when they tried <my favorite distro is perfect for you!>.

kristopolous 1y ago

Is it still XNU/OSF-1 inspired? Are people running it on actual metal?

fithisux 1y ago
https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-5490-machina-lessons-and-insights-from-reimplementing-the-mach-microkernel/ https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-5490-mach...

butterisgood 1y ago

Interesting! I ran some version of Hurd back in 1998, with ip masquerading and forwarding through a dial-up capable Linux box. And now it's 64bit!?

aussiegreenie 1y ago

Has anyone compared the HarmonyOS NEXT to Debian Hurd? HarmonyOS NEXT is the world's most widely used microkernel system, reportedly used on approximately 800 million systems.

ConanRus 1y ago
yeah. one is a communist's malware, another one is a closed source commercial os

QuiCasseRien 1y ago

Is any new operating system is able to emerge nowadays ? each week there are (in C, in Rust, in JS...) What are their hardware support ? at best they can run in a virtual machine End of debate.

johannes1234321 1y ago
First: Hurd isn't a new operating system. It's a decades old project from last millennium. And then: Doing research in operating systems serves a lot of purposes. For some it's just fun. For some it's experimenting which may lead to ideas which may be incorporated into other OSs later, where eit is a lot simpler to do in a small kernel. For some it is an attempt to take over the world, few of those will, but maybe one might. At least for a small part of the world.
fithisux 1y ago
This is not correct. Look at what is happening in the Amiga retrocomputing area. Some of them have Linux support along with AmigaOS/Morphos and Aros. Pretty succesful (expensive though) because they do not release 1000 different systems each year but 2-3. Also, you do not have to support every system. For example if they support these cheap n150 mini pcs, I am more than fine. Something common. Macos runs fine because it works in a specific space.
Twirrim 1y ago
Hurd predates Linux by about a year, but was under stop/start development for several years before that too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd It's as old as dirt, in computing terms. It was intended to be the final part of a fully GNU based operating system, everything else having been created by that stage. Stallman et. al. have promised since the late 80s that this would be the future, and at various stages promised that it will be ready for production work within the next year (or two). Like any promises made by Elon Musk, everyone in the tech industry has long since learned to ignore them. Maybe some day it'll be done, but I'm highly skeptical it has any chance of building up the momentum it needs.

TheAmazingRace 1y ago

Huh... the 64-bit release is news to me. I thought GNU Hurd was 32-bit only?

goku12 1y ago
> 64bit support is now complete, with the same archive coverage as i386 (actually a bit more since some packages are 64b-only) > This 64b support is completely using userland disk drivers from NetBSD thanks to the Rump layer. That's exciting news! I know it's a bit much to get excited about Hurd. But this is a big milestone. And though I'm not holding my breath, I really want to see how far they can take it. I'm not ready to write them off yet. I didn't notice that until I saw your comment. Thanks!
- TheAmazingRace 1y ago
  No problem! I just figured it was worth a mention… because this alone renewed interest in GNU Hurd for me in a huge way.
- bikoxemepojiy 1y ago
  I found that it's a bit surprising that the 64-bit support comes from NetBSD. My initial thought was that porting code from Linux would be a more direct path, especially since a major goal for GNU Hurd is compatibility with the Debian archive.
  - lproven 1y ago
    I have no special insight, but I know of 2 possible factors: * the NetBSD "rump" unikernel is out there: https://rumpkernel.github.io/ https://rumpkernel.github.io/ https://thamizhelango.medium.com/netbsds-rump-kernel-framework-a-deep-dive-into-modular-kernel-architecture-b19e5aaad06d https://thamizhelango.medium.com/netbsds-rump-kernel-framewo... * Secondly, this exists because NetBSD is much much smaller and simpler than Linux, which has undergone decades of enterprise-focussed optimisation.
rurban 1y ago

fithisux 1y ago

There is an attempt to rewrite GNU Mach https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-5490-machina-lessons-and-insights-from-reimplementing-the-mach-microkernel/ https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-5490-mach...

snvzz 1y ago

The HURD has been around for a while, and its architecture is archaic. It's from a world where Mach is the microkernel, and thus microkernels are slow. There's many more options[0] these days. 0. https://www.microkernel.info/ https://www.microkernel.info/

guerrilla 1y ago

If you're interested in what's going on with GNU in general, GUIX is awesome. It's a package manager like Nix but purely GNU (using GNU Guile scheme). It's developed in tandem with the GNU Shepherd init system (instead of sysvinit/systemd/openrc/etc.) and there are distributions based on GNU Hurd kernel (or the Linux-libre kernel). Wikipedia has a pretty good rundown [3] but I recommend booting up a VM image. It's actually quite beautiful. I love the purity of GNOME on a GNU/Hurd system with GUIX and Shepherd where the whole thing is configured in guile[4]. There's just something very aesthetic about the combination. I wish I could use it as my daily driver. 1. https://guix.gnu.org/ https://guix.gnu.org/ 2. https://www.gnu.org/software/shepherd/manual/shepherd.html https://www.gnu.org/software/shepherd/manual/shepherd.html 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Guix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Guix 4. https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/ https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/

Y_Y 1y ago
I'm totally with you, though would note that running Hurd as your main kernel is difficult, but running childhurds on your linux kernel is fun and profitable. https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2020/childhurds-and-substitutes/ https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2020/childhurds-and-substitutes... Obviously I'm crazy, because I use Emacs with EXWM as my shell, but IMHO it's perfectly capable of being a "daily driver" already.
sdsd 1y ago
I'm so excited to try GUIX. Right now I'm on Apple Silicon so I can't get it to work even in a VM, but the second I've got an x64 ISA computer I'm using GUIX
aidenn0 1y ago
One of these days I'll try guix (currently on NixOS). Two things that hold me back (aside from the obvious friction of switching): 1. nixpkgs is huge. If what I need isn't in 25.05, it's in unstable 2. I've been programming in Common Lisp for so long that I can't help but write buggy code any time I try writing in a lisp-1. It seems like it should be such a minor thing, but I invariably inadvertently shadow a function I'm using with some other variable. [edit] I forgot my third issue, which is all of my preferred setup options seem to be further off beaten path in Guix than NixOS (e.g. plasma, zfs)

gnerd00 1y ago

one of the GNU/Hurd maintainers is a neighbor .. he is over 70 now, with degree in physics from a top-ranked US university, most of his days are spent dealing with serious health problems.

flykespice 1y ago
How much is his role on the project taking in consideration his age? I want to know whether I will be senile enough to continue contributing to project when I reach that age
brcmthrowaway 1y ago
What was their day job?
pabs3 1y ago
Which maintainer? Would like to save their websites to archive.org if they have any.

thebitstick 1y ago

Debian GNU/kFreeBSD should be revived.

xvilka 1y ago

At this point investing time (or money) into RedoxOS[1] would be more rational. [1] https://redox-os.org/ https://redox-os.org/