Howdy I have been installing Debian GNU/Hurd 11 into a QEMU VM. I like the fact that it doesn't use the linux kernel so a further bit down the road to FOSS. Anyway, I have downloaded the 20323 NET.iso from the Debian GNU/Hurd repository and installed it. Once installed it's beautiful and I installed gnumeric and GIMP for testing. On a first reboot I can log in via Debian console and then I run startx to get an XFCE4 desktop. It uses the lightdm. However, there is no way to cleanly shut the VM down and I resort to quitting which means on next boot up I get a fsck as it wasn't shutdown properly. Once that is done and I get a console prompt I login and run startx. I get some wait time and then the menu bar at the top, a dock at the bottom and a black screen with a black X cursor. I've restarted lightdm to no avail. I can provide more details if anyone is interested in this. It sure looks like a very good effort at getting a GNU/Hurd, operable, OS out there. Here's what I've been using for info. BTW, the QEMU img that the website says you can run is true. You can run it, but it is some very weird version of a very antique GNU/Hurd distro. I would love to get this working beyond this X window issue. For now it is essentially a time killer as I've reinstalled it probably 20 times with always the same result. Cheers Brian --
