{"id":378337,"date":"2026-04-14T03:16:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T03:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/378337\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T03:16:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T03:16:07","slug":"they-werent-joking-gentoo-was-ported-to-gnu-hurd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/378337\/","title":{"rendered":"They Weren\u2019t Joking: Gentoo WAS Ported To GNU Hurd"},"content":{"rendered":"

Long ago, in the aftermath of the UNIX wars, three kernels emerged from the rubble: BSD, Linux, and Hurd. BSD, being UNIX, was held back by legal wrangling in the aftermath of the wars, and that allowed Linux to pull ahead to a pole position it still enjoys to this day. BSD has its following, of course, but Hurd? GNU Hurd seemed destined to languish\u2026 until April 1st, 2026, when the Gentoo Linux distribution was ported to the Free Software Foundation\u2019s kernel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It turns out, they weren\u2019t actually joking<\/a>. The joke part was that they were moving fully to the Hurd kernel, away from Linux\u2013 you can absolutely still run Gentoo with the Linux kernel, and make no mistake, that\u2019s still the default and best-supported option. Options are good, though, and the Gentoo team has decided that it\u2019s time to add some options to the kernel space, and give the Hurd some time in the sun.<\/p>\n

Unlike the Linux kernel, which follows closely the monolithic UNIX framework\u2013 and the BSD-Unix kernel, which is Unix\u2013GNU Hurd is a microkernel architecture, based originally on the Mach kernel. In that, it\u2019s rather like MacOS. Unlike MacOS, given its roots in the Free Software Foundation, GNU Hurd is 100% free and open source. There are advantages to a microkernel architecture\u2013 it keeps drivers out of kernel space so a dodgy WiFi adapter can\u2019t crash your system, for example\u2013 but the big disadvantage is, of course, drivers. Both Linux and BSD drivers can be ported, but that takes work and many of them have not been.<\/p>\n

Still, now that Microsoft has become a major contributor to the Linux kernel, we could see a lot of the old-school Linux users who talk about \u201cwin-doze\u201d and still spell Microsoft with a dollar sign being tempted to join the Hurd. If that appeals to you and you\u2019re not into Gentoo, Debian has quietly let you install with the Hurd kernel for years now. It\u2019s either that or embrace BSD and escape the chaos vortex.<\/a><\/p>\n

The big three aren\u2019t the only POSIX kernels out there, of course\u2013 there\u2019s even one written entirely in Rust<\/a>, for the die hard rustaceans amongst you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long ago, in the aftermath of the UNIX wars, three kernels emerged from the rubble: BSD, Linux, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[111,139,69,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-378337","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}