Does anyone more familiar with Hurd know how they addressed performance issues encountered by other Mach-based kernels? I remember reading that one of Mach's bottlenecks was validating that each IPC message had proper permissions/access when sending them between processes due to the large number and frequency of messages.
If anything, Mach style IPC has gotten worse because of the greater overhead if kernel/user transitions. Spectre really did a number on context switching overhead.
I'm not a Hurd contributor ( or any OS kernel / library ).
I'm not sure this holds today. One example I can see is related to crypto. We used to have specific hardware for computing cryptography functions but it's now handled directly in standard hardware and the software has not evolved ( but it's been faster and faster to compute checksum functions )
While I upvoted this, as being true for the general population, for me Linux has made it on the desktop (and laptop) much more than 2 decades ago, around 2003, when the remaining problems that had forced me to use dual-booting with Windows had been solved (i.e. when it became possible in Linux to play movies, read DVDs and use TV tuners). When that happened, I wiped out Windows from my computers.
If you have a pro to help you, already for a long time Linux has been fine on the desktop for anyone. My parents, over 80 years old, have used Linux on their PCs for many years, and they did not even know what "Linux" is. That was possible because I installed and configured for them the operating system and all the applications they needed for reading and writing documents, Internet browsing, e-mail, music listening and movie watching etc.
Windows is easy only because it comes preinstalled. I have installed Windows at work on many kinds of computers and during installation I have encountered much more problems impossible to solve for a non-expert than when installing Linux.
However the recent success of gaming-related distros such as SteamOS and Bazzite seem to be succeeding where Usability-focused distros such as Mint, Pop!, and Zorin couldn't get deep traction
This should be a lesson about providing a product versus providing a technology.
Ubuntu is "like Windows but not" which is mostly relevant to people boycotting Windows. Steam Deck is "a gamebox" which people who already like games might want to buy. Bazzite is "a thing that turns your computer into a game box."
It just...has made it. Plenty of power users just use it as their primary OS. I think official figures under-estimate it because many people daily-driving will spoof user agents of other OSes.
Ah, Android, with a userspace based on Java, Kotlin, C and C++ standard libraries, Android native APIs, without anything related to GNU/Linux, unless it is a rooted device, or one gets to package a full Linux userspace as an APK, which isn't fully compatible due to security enforcement mechanisms.
I would look into those statistics regarding desktop world wide adoption, distribution per OS.
It gives a Linux experience within the security sandbox from Android, which is why there are limitations when using it on regular devices, via PlayStore.
Also it requires working around the NDK limitations on available POSIX APIs.
Eric S. Raymond opines that now that Microsoft makes its profits mainly from Azure, some product owner in Microsoft will be allowed to enshittify Windows for collection short-term profit, thus paving way for Linux on the desktop.
First there will be the Desktop Linux of the year
breakthrough. Evil folks say it will coincide with
the end of the world via a total global catastrophy
but these people don't understand beauty - such as
TempleOS, the most perfect OS of all times.
Next year will be the year of GNU Hurd, as well as
The Desktop Linux Year and people really using
HaikuOS on real hardware for years. You read it here
first!
ps: some slides from earlier this year https://fosdem.org/2026/events/attachments/7FZXHF-updates_on...
full vid here https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/7FZXHF-updates_on_gnu...
Adding 20% to a 10 second operation is a lot longer on a wall clock than adding 20% to a 1 second operation.
I'm not sure this holds today. One example I can see is related to crypto. We used to have specific hardware for computing cryptography functions but it's now handled directly in standard hardware and the software has not evolved ( but it's been faster and faster to compute checksum functions )
If you have a pro to help you, already for a long time Linux has been fine on the desktop for anyone. My parents, over 80 years old, have used Linux on their PCs for many years, and they did not even know what "Linux" is. That was possible because I installed and configured for them the operating system and all the applications they needed for reading and writing documents, Internet browsing, e-mail, music listening and movie watching etc.
Windows is easy only because it comes preinstalled. I have installed Windows at work on many kinds of computers and during installation I have encountered much more problems impossible to solve for a non-expert than when installing Linux.
However the recent success of gaming-related distros such as SteamOS and Bazzite seem to be succeeding where Usability-focused distros such as Mint, Pop!, and Zorin couldn't get deep traction
Ubuntu is "like Windows but not" which is mostly relevant to people boycotting Windows. Steam Deck is "a gamebox" which people who already like games might want to buy. Bazzite is "a thing that turns your computer into a game box."
Also lets not forget those distros play Windows games, because hardly any studio bothers with native Linux games.
And there's Android.
I would look into those statistics regarding desktop world wide adoption, distribution per OS.
It gives a Linux experience within the security sandbox from Android, which is why there are limitations when using it on regular devices, via PlayStore.
Also it requires working around the NDK limitations on available POSIX APIs.
Linux is not userspace. Linux is a kernel, and android is a parallel fork of the kernel. So android is a version of linux but is not GNU/Linux.
Android/Linux, if you will. We dont have to be shy this.
https://x.com/esrtweet/status/2084605702203424896
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
GuixSD with GNU Hurd would be a really fun way to repurpose an old MBP.