Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you saying that Hurd will also kill Google/Linux?
What I'm saying is that Hurd is just a kernel in the same way that Linux is also just a kernel
They're both kernels, one of them just happens to actually be useful
GNU Hurd News 2026-Q2
141–150 of 163 posts
Re: GNU Hurd News 2026-Q2
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. Stallman was just a bit salty that GNU turned out to be barely relevant. Most of the code in a so-called "GNU/Linux" system is not GNU. There really was a GNU project, but it was just an attempt to harmonize system tools across all open and proprietary Unices.
> GNU turned out to be barely relevant GCC, GDB, CoreUtils, etc - A COLLECTION of useful programs alongside a kernel such as Linux. Barely relevant? We owe our thanks to the GNU project. If Linus did not create Linux, something else would have taken it's place. "Maybe" HURD... or maybe something else.
NetBSD or one of that ilk.
Re: GNU Hurd News 2026-Q2
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
This should be a lesson about providing a product versus providing a technology. Ubuntu is "like Windows but not" which is mostly relevant to people boycotting Windows. Steam Deck is "a gamebox" which people who already like games might want to buy. Bazzite is "a thing that turns your computer into a gamebox." Of course, people don't actually want gameboxes either - they want to play games - but it's a few steps clos…
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Re: GNU Hurd News 2026-Q2
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
The snark artist in me would say that Linux is a kernel plus tens of millions of lines of code that absolutely should not be in the kernel but are.
Ok, I'll bite. Which parts of the kernel should not be there, given that Linux is not a microkernel? I maintain that most of the code is there for hardware support, for security, or to support user-space application models. I'll grant you the in-kernel nfs server and ipsec implementations, but those are not tens of millions of lines of code. The only way I can reach that number is by lobbing off a huge part of device…
Hot take: filesystem drivers. Final stage boot should load two images: a kernel which surfaces block devices via HAL, and a one or more filesystem drivers which function as external backends for the in-kernel vfs system.
This would facilitate more innovation and ability to quickly resolve reliability issues with filesystems, make the whole “can you boot off of it or do you need a kernel module” distinction obsolete, and would massively reduce the temptation for the kernel to support certain APIs only for certain filesystems (let me inotify on procfs, and use nonblocking IO on any FS I like, dammit!)
Re: GNU Hurd News 2026-Q2
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: What would you like to see most in minix? Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT Hello everybody out there using minix - I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones... ...PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT protable (use…
100% of the user space programs were from gnu. Compiler was from gnu The initial filesystem was minix The kernel was Linux. So I would say Linus had 100s of man years of ecosystem he could benefit from and that is the oss spirit. But yeah he did not write a shell or an editor or Compiler etc and the kernel was of course oriented towards an unix like os.imagine you would have had to start from scratch, if you had just…
Were. How many are now? 1%? GNU's Not Vim, GNU's Not IntelliJ, GNU's Not Google Chrome.
Re: GNU Hurd News 2026-Q2
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. Stallman was just a bit salty that GNU turned out to be barely relevant. Most of the code in a so-called "GNU/Linux" system is not GNU. There really was a GNU project, but it was just an attempt to harmonize system tools across all open and proprietary Unices.
> GNU turned out to be barely relevant GCC, GDB, CoreUtils, etc - A COLLECTION of useful programs alongside a kernel such as Linux. Barely relevant? We owe our thanks to the GNU project. If Linus did not create Linux, something else would have taken it's place. "Maybe" HURD... or maybe something else.
Are you not using vendor-lockin-licensed LLVM instead?
Re: GNU Hurd News 2026-Q2
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know this is in jest, but because of the "hurr durr" connotations, only the absolute most bearded of free software zealot neckbeards are going to ever run GNU Hurd beyond simplytest driving it. Open source continues its unbroken streak of showing us why naming things is important.
That seems like an awesome reason to use it in an era of most software is an AI slopfest.
it's GPL, not plus-N-word license.
Re: GNU Hurd News 2026-Q2
#148Re: GNU Hurd News 2026-Q2
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are AIs good enough at doing novel work that they have yet to encounter? My guess is that the GNU/HURD people are doing a lot of novel work that doesn't yet exist.
My opinion is Sol or Fable could absolutely "finish" Hurd (whatever the definition of "finished" is), but it would be difficult to review and understand everything it did, nobody would trust it, people would raise copyright concerns, doing so would violate all sorts of GNU cultural norms, and it would sit in a repo unused.
Thus my "blasphemous" comment.
Re: GNU Hurd News 2026-Q2
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
People lost their shit when Spectre mitigations added 20% overhead to kernel calls though. Why wouldn't they do the same for microkernel overhead?
The same people are perfectly fine with Electron crap all over the place, they don't really care about overhead.
Not true in a data center - 20% less work for same CPU is like 25% more cores needed for any applications where the scaling is driven by CPU utilization. That is $ - and people have made things so far from efficient many medium size companies have 100k cores to pay for.