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Release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2025
Debian GNU/Hurd 2025 released!
It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2025. This is a snapshot of Debian "sid" at the time of the stable Debian "Trixie" release (August 2025), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release.
The installation ISO images can be downloaded from cdimage for i386 or cdimage for amd64 in the NETINST Debian flavor. Besides the friendly Debian installer, a pre-installed disk image is also available, making it even easier to try Debian GNU/Hurd. The easiest way to run it is inside a VM such as qemu
Debian GNU/Hurd is currently available for the i386 and amd64 architectures with about 72% of the Debian archive, and more to come!
Update
In LWN:
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Debian GNU/Hurd 2025 released
Debian's GNU/Hurd team has announced the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2025: [...]
The Register:
Quoting: New Debian/Hurd follows closely behind new Debian Linux —
Before Linux, GNU was working on its own Mach-based Unix compatible OS. Now, in the footsteps of Debian 13, there is a new release.
Debian GNU/Hurd 2025 is the latest release of the other GNU operating system. The announcement email from developer Samuel Thibault says this release includes a working x86-64 edition, thanks to NetBSD disk drivers in a Rump layer – which also means it can now use USB disks and CD drives. Hurd has a port of the Rust language, plus "quite working" SMP support, and it can run "about 72% of the Debian archive, and more to come!" It's the first news update from the project since June 2024, and clearly significant progress is happening. The activity trend line looks good.
This is not exactly a review, because this is not exactly an alternative Unix OS. The Hurd is not any form of Linux, nor is it a BSD. So, although Debian GNU/Hurd 2025 is an edition of Debian Trixie, bear in mind that this is a highly-experimental OS, built to a radical design. It doesn't run on many different models of hardware, and it won't run most existing software. Its readme file is called YES_REALLY_README, and it opens as follows...