I can't speak for the developer of Hurd.

But I think it's fun and something different.

It's one of the few OS up there that seems to be able to take advantage of multicores.

Other such as barrelfish and dragonflyBSD.

???

Hurd doesn't even support SMP yet.

That's correct Hurd doesn't support SMP yet [1]. In theory it should and I'm waiting for that.

Kind of like how I waited for HAMMER2.

1. https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/faq/smp.html

Because we already have enough UNIX clones and there are people that care about bringing forward the computing stack with modern concepts.

personally, I think people who are interested in hurd should take a look at redox. Its a new microkernel with similar design goals that uses rust as its implementation language.

The L4 ecosystem is much more mature. There are formally proven variants like seL4, and more widely used variants like wrmOS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L4_microkernel_family

I am excited to see how redox evolves, but unless they start writing, virtualizing, or porting drivers it is not much more than an experiment in how well Rust can handle OS programming.

Hurd is part of the GNU system; it's the intended kernel for the GNU userspace. Linux has been used as an intermediary because Hurd isn't ready for widespread use. But the idea has always been that Hurd would replace Linux and create a GNU system that is entirely under the FSF.

Beyond the philosophical differences, another difference is that Hurd is a microkernel and Linux is monolithic. Hurd can be considered a research project for exploring microkernels. The most well-developed microkernels are not open source or free.

> But the idea has always been that Hurd would replace Linux and create a GNU system that is entirely under the FSF.

I don't think that's the case. The FSF has long been satisfied that Linux meets its goals for an OS kernel, and the Hurd project has changed somewhat from "this will be the final piece of the GNU operating system" to "this is something we're working on to explore microkernel design." I think its developers have given up on it ever replacing Linux, as it's very behind in hardware support, and the gap is only ever growing rather than shrinking. For example, it doesn't support multicore or 64-bit userland (in a time when projects are pulling 32-bit userland support!).

You don't know the fundamental difference between Hurd and Linux, do you?

Please don't post dismissive comments like this. If you know more, share what you know so the rest of us can learn. If you don't want to do that or don't have time, that's fine, but then please just don't post anything.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Hurd is like Mazda Wankel engine. :-)

Except Mazda actually sold millions of cars that ran down the road with the Wankel engine.

The wankel was actually like Hurd at one point, everybody thought it would be the next big thing and many car manufacturers had wankel engines. Mazda stuck it out and funded it into production.

Are you referring to the micro-kernel part?

Yes