Submitted by “It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian ‘sid’ at the time of the Debian ‘wheezy’ release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release.” Important note: 75% of Debian packages are supported bu Debian GNU/Hurd. Impressive.
This gives users a chance to try out different kernels without the complexity (and variables) of changing OS/distros as well.
This article begs the question: what is performance like compared to GNU/linux? Although dated, this was relevant:
GNU/Hurd verus GNU/Linux
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=debian_gnu_hurd&…
“Debian GNU/Hurd is an interesting project but for now its support is still in shambles, the hardware support is vastly outdated, and there is also no SMP support at this time. Regardless, it will be interesting to see how Debian GNU/Hurd turns out for the 7.0 Wheezy milestone.”
7.0 is here, hopefully we will get an update!
Also, for good measure…
GNU/kFreeBSD vs GNU/Linux
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=debian_kfreebsd&…
Edited 2013-05-22 14:06 UTC
Getting 75% of Debian’s packages running on a kernel that’s about as up-to-date as MS-DOS 6.22 is pretty impressive. Great to see that they finally got past the 2G partition limit.
Especially since all of the GNU/Hurd devs spend 99% of their waking hours running around every forum insisting that it’s not Linux but GNU/Linux…
No, I think the 99% of their time is spent porting it to a different microkernel.
Trix => Sprite => Mach => L4 => Coyotos => Viengoos => Mach
Wonder if they’ll accidentally port it to Linux some day.
Given that most packages target UNIX clones, I would say it is even older than CP/M.
Edited 2013-05-22 19:53 UTC
I was wondering what happened with the Debian GNU/HURD variant, which they were supposedly trying to get out for the first release with Wheezy but it never seemed to happen. Nice late surprise. And 75% is quite a nice, impressive chunk of packages. It’s obvious how Debian GNU/Linux runs… what would be interesting to find out is the differences with Debian GNU/HURD and Debian GNU/kFreeBSD by comparison.
By the way, the kFreeBSD variant came with Squeeze as a tech preview. Wheezy mentions practically nothing of note about this version, but I would assume it is “ready” for normal use now. Has anyone tried it? How far has it come along? I know the Squeeze version was pretty buggy.
Hopefully its release causes a spike in GNU/HURD interest and development. Competition is never a bad thing.
Edited 2013-05-22 18:54 UTC
It seems like it’s been awhile since we’ve heard about the Hurd.