I was reading the Free Software Foundation's essays about how everyone should say GNU/Linux all the time. They say Linux is only the kernel. They say the Operating System is the kernel and all the tools and stuff combined. They say GNU is about 15% of GNU/Linux and Linux is about 1.5% or something like that. And they say GNU provided all the framework or something.

What I don't get, is why is the HURD so hard to develop? I mean if they had everything ready almost except the kernel and then Linux came along back in '92, and they're so miffed about people saying "Linux" all the time, how come they haven't been able to get the HURD up and running so they could release their own OS with all GNU stuff and just call it the GNU operating system?

Is the HURD way more complicated than Linux or something? (I'm not an expert programmer and I don't understand kernels very well)

It just doesn't add up for me. I mean if Linux is such a small contribution to the GNU/Linux operating system then why is it so hard to replace it with the HURD?

I don't really mean to bash GNU, I love their stuff, g++ and the GPL liscense and all of that. It's just that some of their rhetoric seems kind of fishy to me.

IIRC, the HURD is a micro-kernel, which means that it is of a different architecture to Linux. The idea behind a micro-kernel is to have a very small kernel, and do most things in user space rather than kernel space. Basically, this makes the kernel small and fast.

I don't know about how hard it is to develop a micro-kernel, however there aren't really any commercially successful, real-world examples. I think Mac OS X comes close, but it still isn't a pure micro kernel.

One of HURDs problems is a lack of will, and a lack of developers. The Linux kernel did, to an extent, suck all the oxygen away from the HURD development.

I'm sure there are other reasons too...

--Ian