GNU Hurd News 2026-Q2

pplaguna 3 days ago 35 commentsRead Article on gnu.org

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Discussion Sentiment

75% Positive

Analyzed from 606 words in the discussion.

Discussion (35 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

inigyou•about 1 hour ago

Cool to finally see some small silly tech stuff here that isn't trying to make money.

oytis•4 minutes ago

You are calling a Linux (sorry, GNU/Linux) killer small silly stuff?

maplant•2 minutes ago

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as GNU/Linux, is in fact, just Linux.

jnpnj•about 2 hours ago

It seems Samuel Thibault is still there, sweet.

ps: some slides from earlier this year https://fosdem.org/2026/events/attachments/7FZXHF-updates_on...

full vid here https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/7FZXHF-updates_on_gnu...

csb6•about 1 hour ago

Does anyone more familiar with Hurd know how they addressed performance issues encountered by other Mach-based kernels? I remember reading that one of Mach's bottlenecks was validating that each IPC message had proper permissions/access when sending them between processes due to the large number and frequency of messages.

glhaynes•11 minutes ago

Is there reason to think they've addressed them?

floxy•35 minutes ago

Is that a bottleneck anymore? Maybe something that was appreciable in 1994 isn't a big performance hit in 2026?

Analemma_•22 minutes ago

Isn't it even worse now? The faster computers get, the more that software-induced bottlenecks hurt.

Manozco•9 minutes ago

I'm not a Hurd contributor ( or any OS kernel / library ).

I'm not sure this holds today. One example I can see is related to crypto. We used to have specific hardware for computing cryptography functions but it's now handled directly in standard hardware and the software has not evolved ( but it's been faster and faster to compute checksum functions )

sirsinsalot•about 2 hours ago

I hope Hurd has its day. Maybe in 100 years or something.

this_user•about 1 hour ago

Instead of rewriting Bun, maybe Anthropic should have thrown some tokens at finishing Hurd.

officeplant•32 minutes ago

We'd have to name it Turd then.

achyudh•24 minutes ago

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

EarlKing•about 1 hour ago

Fun fact: Duke Nukem Forever shipped before GNU Hurd.

lynx97•about 2 hours ago

Hurd will have its day once Linux makes it on the desktop :-)

adrian_b•about 1 hour ago

While I upvoted this, as being true for the general population, for me Linux has made it on the desktop (and laptop) much more than 2 decades ago, around 2003, when the remaining problems that had forced me to use dual-booting with Windows had been solved (i.e. when it became possible in Linux to play movies, read DVDs and use TV tuners). When that happened, I wiped out Windows from my computers.

If you have a pro to help you, already for a long time Linux has been fine on the desktop for anyone. My parents, over 80 years old, have used Linux on their PCs for many years, and they did not even know what "Linux" is. That was possible because I installed and configured for them the operating system and all the applications they needed for reading and writing documents, Internet browsing, e-mail, music listening and movie watching etc.

Windows is easy only because it comes preinstalled. I have installed Windows at work on many kinds of computers and during installation I have encountered much more problems impossible to solve for a non-expert than when installing Linux.

sampo•5 minutes ago

Eric S. Raymond opines that now that Microsoft makes its profits mainly from Azure, some product owner in Microsoft will be allowed to enshittify Windows for collection short-term profit, thus paving way for Linux on the desktop.

https://x.com/esrtweet/status/2084605702203424896

pjmlp•about 1 hour ago

Linux has made it to the desktop, packaged inside VMs served by Apple, Microsoft and Google.

metalliqaz•about 1 hour ago

That's not really what everyone means.

However the recent success of gaming-related distros such as SteamOS and Bazzite seem to be succeeding where Usability-focused distros such as Mint, Pop!, and Zorin couldn't get deep traction

NoImmatureAdHom•about 1 hour ago

It just...has made it. Plenty of power users just use it as their primary OS. I think official figures under-estimate it because many people daily-driving will spoof user agents of other OSes.

And there's Android.

veqq•about 1 hour ago

Linux hit 10% desktop usage recently

pjmlp•41 minutes ago

Not really, that was a fluke, still below 10%, although getting closer with 7.53%.

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide

shevy-java•about 1 hour ago

First there will be the Desktop Linux of the year breakthrough. Evil folks say it will coincide with the end of the world via a total global catastrophy but these people don't understand beauty - such as TempleOS, the most perfect OS of all times.

isityettime•about 1 hour ago

> I plan to build bootable images and boot the kernel on Apple M1

GuixSD with GNU Hurd would be a really fun way to repurpose an old MBP.

shevy-java•about 1 hour ago

Next year will be the year of GNU Hurd, as well as The Desktop Linux Year and people really using HaikuOS on real hardware for years. You read it here first!

p0w3n3d•about 2 hours ago

Wow.