GNU Hurd wiki/ microkernel/ mach/ gnumach/ hardware compatibility list

CPU Architecture

GNU Mach current only supports the x86 (alias ia32 or i386) architecture.

amd64/ix64 should work in 32-bit compatibility mode. However, in practice amd64 systems seem to be troublesome more often than not. This is probably related to the same (chipset-related) problems we often see with recent machines; but it seems that amd64 ones use problematic chipsets particularily often. So far we haven't heard of similar problems with Intel's eqivalent ix64 (or EM64T as it used to be called) -- but maybe that just means fewer people tried running the Hurd on such machines :-)

Support for running GNU Mach (and a complete GNU/Hurd system) in a Xen domU (again on x86 only) is being worked on.

Read about further ports.

Memory

GNU Mach will use a maximum of 1 GiB of RAM. If your system has more, the surplus will silently be ignored. (In past times, this would hinder GNU Mach from booting at all, but this has been fixed, so you no longer need to apply GRUB's uppermem directive.)

Video Cards

Debian distributes a version of X.org. If your video card driver depends on a special kernel interface such as that provided by the agpgart kernel module for the Linux kernel, then your video card will only be supported by the VESA driver.

Using an internal i815 videocard won't work (at least when using the specialized driver), because of missing AGP GART support in GNU Mach.

Sound

No sound cards are supported at this time.

USB 1.1/2.0

USB is not supported at this time.

However, USB-type keyboards and mice may (and have been reported to) work nevertheless, given that the hardware / BIOS is doing emulation to the supported legacy interfaces.

IEEE 1394 (Firewire)

IEEE 1394 is not supported at this time

Storage

All common IDE drives should work. Some drive geometries do not work, e.g. drives with hundreds of GiB of storage space. If you find a specific IDE drive that does not work, make a note of the model and technical specifications here.

SATA drives may work in compatibility mode.

This is how booting a GNU/Hurd system will typically fail if GNU Mach couldn't connect to the hard disk, e.g., in a SATA system without IDE compatibility mode:

start (hd0,3)/hurd/ext2fs.static: (hd0,3)/hurd/ext2fs.static
device:hd0s4: No such device or address

There may be an option in the system's BIOS setup to configure enabling such a compatibility mode.

Device Drivers

GNU Mach Reference Manual, Configuration contains a list of device drivers that are included in GNU Mach and elaborates on the hardware devices they support.

User Success Reports

These boards are known to work. Gnumach/Hurd has been installed and run on these board successfully.

User Failure Reports

Some people couldn't get these hardware combinations to work with Hurd.

Note: The Debian GNU/Hurd installer actually runs on Linux, so it (almost) always works. The critical bit is booting after installation.