Gentoo GNU/Hurd – Gentoo Linux

We are proud to announce a new port of Gentoo GNU Hard! We crack team has been working hard to port Gentoo to the Hurd and can now share that they have succeeded, although it is still in a heavily experimental stage. You can try Gentoo GNU/Hurd using a pre-prepared disk image. The easiest way to do this is with QEMU:

$ wget https://distfiles.gentoo.org/experimental/x86/hurd/hurd-i686-preview.qcow2.sig
$ wget https://distfiles.gentoo.org/experimental/x86/hurd/hurd-i686-preview.qcow2
$ gpg --verify hurd-i686-preview.qcow2.sig hurd-i686-preview.qcow2
$ qemu-system-i386 -drive file=hurd-i686-preview.qcow2,format=qcow2 -m 2G -net user,hostfwd=tcp:127.0.0.1:2222-:2222 -net nic,model=ne2k_pci --enable-kvm -M q35

To log in, enter login rootthen use gnuhurdrox as the password. Upon registration, you can run ./setup-net.sh and /etc/init.d/sshd restart to get SSH. Connect via ssh -p 2222 root@127.0.0.1 on your host.

We have evolved scripts to build this image locally and conveniently work on further development of the Hurd Harbour. Release media such as stages and automatic image building are future goals, as is feature parity on x86-64. Further contributions are welcome, encouraged and needed. Be patient, expect to get your hands dirty, expect breakage, and have fun!

Oh, and Gentoo GNU/Hurd also works on real hardware!

April Fool’s post

This was originally the subject of a post on April 1st. Here is the original text for posterity…

We are proud to announce that Gentoo plans to switch to GNU Hard as its primary core. Our crack team of boffins have been hard at work getting Gentoo to the Hurd and can now share that they’ve succeeded, although it’s still in a heavily experimental stage.

Linux has long been a source of unreliability. Despite the experimental status of the port, we’ve found the Hurd to be immensely more robust, and we hope to end Linux support by the end of 2026. Previous generations of developers had already tried to port Gentoo to the Hurd, but the world was not yet ready. It is now. You can try Gentoo GNU Hard using a pre-prepared disk image. The easiest way to do this is with QEMU: (…)