GNU Guix Wants To Replace The Linux-Libre Kernel With The Hurd Micro-Kernel

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GNU Guix Wants To Replace The Linux-Libre Kernel With The Hurd Micro-Kernel

Seemingly at first thinking it was just an April Fools' Day joke, but it turns out the GNU Guix developers responsible for their package manager and operating system are actually working to replace their Linux (GNU Linux-libre to be exact) kernel with GNU Hurd...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GNU-Guix-Going-Hurd

[Xaero_Vincent]

Definitely seems to be 'user first' decision /s.

Well you could say it gives the user the complete freedom of being *unable* to use modern computers for anything. Work Productivity or Entertainment on a PC? You Don't Need That!™

[pal666]

well, it's not like linux-libre has good hardware support either, so they aren't probably loosing that much

[JoshuaAshton]

Yeah, like anyone is ever going to use GNU Hurd unironically ever.

[StarterX4]

Does someone even use that package manager? Or it's dead just like Hurd?

[Xaero_Vincent]

well, it's not like linux-libre has good hardware support either, so they aren't probably loosing that much

Being able to access more than 4GB of RAM with the 64-bit Linux-libre kernel and userland and being able to take advantage of SMP for multi-core CPUs seems like an advantage that will be going away for awhile (or a long time under Hurd?).

It would be totally pointless to run this Hurd distribution in Xen or KVM as that will have to violate user freedoms of using a Linux-libre or regular Linux distro as the host OS.

[ElectricPrism]

If GNU could take all their stuff to GNU+Hurd and Linux could replace their stuff with BusyBox I'd be down.

I mean GNU are "those people" like scientologists or evangelical christians smacking people in the forehead.

And after the RSM Epstein MIT Fiasco it's emberrasing.

The sooner Hurd becomes a thing the better.

[tildearrow]

They want GNU Hurd to "increase security and freedom for their users."

I demand my freedom to use my AMD card and USB 3.0 devices!

[ssokolow]

Well, there's the end of GNU Guix's utility. It already took long enough to get things like GOG.com supporting glibc on top of Linux.

On the open-source side, I doubt Hurd supports APIs like cgroups.

[andyprough]

I would definitely try it. Unfortunately, Guix doesn't have enough packages available, so I couldn't use it as a daily system as I wouldn't be able to get my work done on it. And with the Hurd kernel, probably fewer packages still will work. But I would love to see what they can make it do. I think this is really what the Hurd has been needing all along - for a distro to commit to it and to be forced to try to get it working in a lot more situations.

A couple things:
SMP is over-rated - not even needed for about 98% of what the average computer user does on their system. My own tests in turning it off for a couple weeks last year showed me that I was absolutely fine without it, hardly ever noticed it being off at all. And it's clearly a security nightmare. If I were working on the Hurd kernel, I wouldn't make SMP a top priority.
And Linux-libre supports a ton of hardware. My year old Asus laptop with i7, 16GB ram, NVME SSD and many other modern features runs very well any time I use the Linux-libre kernel. Anyone who thinks Linux-libre can't support modern hardware knows very little about the kernel itself.