The state of the Hurd

Has anyone here successfully installed Debian GNU/Hurd anywhere?

I was willing to try it in a VirtualBox, still struggling with the little annoyances in the Linux world, and Debian's version seemed to be a decent Hurd distribution. However, the installation won't go through just yet. I'm on it.

Until it is done, there will probably be a lot of time to think about the Whats and Whys - especially the Whys: 27 years after the heated debate between Torvalds and Tanenbaum regarding the advantages of a microkernel over a monolithic kernel, there is no technical reason anymore to not switch to a microkernel. Modern computers have been strong enough for that for quite a while now. After Linux's birth, both the Plan 9 operating system (which is surprisingly similar to the Hurd, except some implementation details and the GUI) and less known systems like DragonFly BSD have moved on to (some kind of) a microkernel design. Why is Linux still leading the open source scenery?

Is it "good enough" to survive the better?

Originally Posted by YesItsMe Has anyone here successfully installed Debian GNU/Hurd anywhere?

I have it running on both VM and fysical hardware.

Originally Posted by YesItsMe Modern computers have been strong enough for that for quite a while now

It's not about computing power and never has been.

Originally Posted by YesItsMe I was willing to try it in a VirtualBox, still struggling with the little annoyances in the Linux world, and Debian's version seemed to be a decent Hurd distribution. However, the installation won't go through just yet. I'm on it.

Try qemu/kvm (prefab images are available as well).
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/p...est/hurd-i386/

YES_REALLY_README.txt
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/p...LLY_README.txt

Originally Posted by YesItsMe Is it "good enough" to survive the better?

It still lacks some vital components (and many hardware only works via a Linux-compatibility layer).
Biggest issue is the amount of developers and users...

Originally Posted by jens It's not about computing power and never has been.

An explicit design goal was to make it run on cheap hardware so students could afford it. In particular, for years it ran on a regular 4.77 MHZ PC with no hard disk.

Originally Posted by jens Try qemu/kvm (prefab images are available as well). https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/p...est/hurd-i386/

Ah, no, the problem was not the image. It was me not reading the README. I fixed it by disabling the network during the installation...
But this thread was not intended as a personal troubleshooting thread anyway. (But thank you a ton!)

I expect a lot of computer students will be using an ARM based SBC like the Raspberry Pi, as it is cheap & is specifically geared towards learning computing & programming skills - it's main O/S is Debian based too.