Hi all, Allow me to give a short introduction. I have been using various flavours of Linux for about 25 years. About 20 years ago, I read the MINIX book by Tanenbaum. A discussion at work reminded me of GNU/HURD and to my surprise I noticed that there had been a release of Debian GNU/HURD in august 2025! So I want to try this OS, just for fun, and perhaps I can contribute something in the future.
My question in short: Debian GNU/HURD does not boot on my physical PC, but it does work in KVM/QEMU. Please help. Details for KVM/QEMU: - I downloaded the the stable AMD64 image (august 2025) - My PC runs Ubuntu linux. I installed qemu-system and I was able to start Debian GNU/HURD as described on the Debian GNU/HURD README - I was able to set the password for user "demo" and I was able to log in to Debian GNU/HURD with ssh - I was able to execute "sudo apt update" on HURD, and I was able to download and install 287 packages. Conclusion: Debian GNU/HURD works in KVM/QEMU Details for booting on actual hardware: - I have used a 32 GB USB key (Buffalo), using "dd" to write the image - Upon boot, I select "Boot Options", then "USB Key". In this step, I must select "Legacy/UEFI". If I set the BIOS to UEFI only, I cannot select the USB Key. - The blue GRUB screen appears and I can select "boot Debian Gnu/HURD" - The screen goes black, and then the boot process just stops. On the screen there is a message about "HPET clicks every 41 nanoseconds", and there is a message from "../kern/mach_clock.c" but otherwise it seems that the boot process just stops completely. There is no I/O activity to the USB Key and even after waiting 20 minutes nothing changed. I will play around a bit with Gnu/HURD on KVM/QEMU but to be honest, I was hoping to use it as an actual OS on an actual machine, not as an emulated system. I realize that not all hardware is supported and that things like sound cards, graphics cards, network adapters may not work, but it appears to me that Debian GNU/HURD should at least boot into a terminal or something, and I basically get nothing. If needed I can send more info about the PC (CPU, motherboard, memory, etc). Regards, Shinichi
