Debian GNU/Hurd 2025 released
96 comments
·August 9, 2025tombert
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?
bombcar
The "gnu" in the famous email is GNU Hurd; we're still waiting:
>I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.
dec0dedab0de
no it's not, the GNU system was already established by then,.and in use with other kernels. Linus was referring to GNU as a whole, not Hurd.
bombcar
GNU was a toolchain in search of a kernel; which was supposed to be Hurd.
(It often got installed on top of “real” Unix because it was a damn good toolchain)
asveikau
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
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.
eadmund
> I played with RedoxOS a bit in a virtual machine a few years ago, and it seemed cool, so maybe that can be the logical successor to something like Hurd.
A problem with RedoxOS is that it is not GPLed: contributors have no assurance that they and others will be able to use software built with their contributions.
Microsoft, Apple, Google and Facebook all have plenty of money to pay engineers; they don’t need my contributions for free.
dietr1ch
Oh, I thought that was going to die shortly after Jeremy moved to System76, but it didn't,
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bawolff
And now we have FUSE. The good ideas do get taken up by the mainstream.
asveikau
I feel like there's a difference between FUSE, an anomalous way to implement a filesystem, and having the user-space method be the primary mechanism to implement a filesystem. The latter ensures that the user-space thing doesn't have a quality gap with "real" FS drivers.
marcosdumay
We have entire userspace network protocols, ePBF, and to some extent even ePool pooling ideas from microkernels. But A single disgruntled kernel dev is enough to stop Rust device drivers from existing, so no, the idea is still not here.
bawolff
> but I've always thought that the microkernel design was more elegant than the monolithic thing we ended up with.
The thing with elegant systems is they usually don't succeed if the alternative is something pragmatic that has been battle tested.
tombert
No question, and especially now with Linux running on billions of devices (if you include Android in that at least), it would be kind of difficult to make a case for a brand new desktop operating system. A lot of the weird edge cases for Linux have been found and fixed and ironed out through decades of continued use.
I tried installing FreeBSD on a laptop years ago, which isn't really an "obscure" operating system or anything, but even that had a lot of compatibility problems with regards to drivers for wifi and GPUs, and even that would have a considerable head-start over something like Hurd if it were to try and take on the desktop world.
bee_rider
Speaking of BSD, in the hypothetical no-Linux universe, that would be the obvious candidate for taking the Linux spot, right? Rather than Hurd. BSD might even have won in the Linux-included universe, if some random events has panned out differently. Why not, right?
Twirrim
> it would be kind of difficult to make a case for a brand new desktop operating system
Google is sure trying with Fuscia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchsia_(operating_system)
femto
> especially now with Linux running on billions of devices
Aren't those billions of Linux/Android instances typically running on top of an seL4 microkernel?
m463
You're talking about systemd right? :)
I suspect that there is a place for elegant systems - they just have to be pragmatic in how they launch.
Start small, do a limited function, or replace an existing limited function, and grow from there.
Thing is, linux is a kernel, but its driver support and hooks into the rest of userspace makes it more than just a kernel. Harder to replace with something more elegant/better.
WhyNotHugo
> The thing with elegant systems is they usually don't succeed if the alternative is something faster.
FTFY
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gjsman-1000
Curiously, in what no academic could have predicted, millions of people interact with a microkernel every day, and it was written by freaking Nintendo of all possible companies. (The Switch is a custom microkernel called Horizon; not FreeBSD, not Linux, not Android.) Almost every other consumer device is monolithic or hybrid.
While the Switch was broken early, this was due to NVIDIA's buggy boot code. The operating system itself... you could literally pwn WebKit or the Bluetooth driver, and get absolutely nowhere. SciresM famously reimplemented the kernel in an open source fashion (Mesosphere) and the secure monitor code (Exosphere), and has publicly stated they have zero possible security bugs in his eyes. That was in 2020 and there have not been any reports of kernel security bugs since.
comex
To be fair, microkernels are also highly successful in embedded devices and auxiliary processors. It’s just that you don’t usually directly interact with them. For example, Intel ME runs MINIX, and Apple’s Secure Enclave Processor runs L4. Also most OSes these days have some kind of hypervisor/secure monitor that’s more privileged than the regular kernel: TEE on Android, SPTM on Apple, VBS on Windows, and proprietary ones on all the game consoles. They vary in how much functionality they’re actually responsible for, but if it’s a significant amount then they tend to have a microkernel-ish design internally.
Another example of microkernel-based systems you do interact with is car infotainment systems, where QNX has apparently seen a lot of use – though I think these days it’s being displaced by Linux and Android Automotive? I don’t actually know much about that industry.
guerrilla
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.
2. https://www.gnu.org/software/shepherd/manual/shepherd.html
aussiegreenie
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
[dead]
alhazrod
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?
gnerd00
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.
brcmthrowaway
What was their day job?
TheAmazingRace
Huh... the 64-bit release is news to me. I thought GNU Hurd was 32-bit only?
kristopolous
Is it still XNU/OSF-1 inspired? Are people running it on actual metal?
ofalkaed
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.
o11c
Well, prior to this release I would have said "there is no point", but it looks like Hurd has finally gotten rid of some of the major warts I remember when I first took at look at it over a decade ago.
A lot of software fails to build on Hurd because it makes (often dangerously) false assumptions that the software really needs to think about properly. `PATH_MAX` is the most visible one, but others exist as well.
(By contrast, I have found that software that fails on one of the BSDs is often failing because the particular OS completely lacks some essential feature, or at least lacks a stable API/ABI thereto.)
ofalkaed
So what would you say its point is now?
SlowTao
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
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!>.
xelxebar
Note that Guix also runs on the Hurd and has first class support for running a Hurd VM service if you just want to play around.
QuiCasseRien
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
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.
Twirrim
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 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.
fithisux
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.
ants_everywhere
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
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_mi...
Neal Walfield was working on a new microkernel as well: https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/microkernel/viengoos.html
ants_everywhere
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
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
>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.
ants_everywhere
thanks, I hadn't heard of Genode, this looks really cool
cmrdporcupine
Genode is more an "OS construction kit" than an OS, isn't it?
butterisgood
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!?
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
So, in some ways, if microkernels interest you, Debian Hurd is a place to contribute where the ground has yet to be completely trodden.