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[[!meta title="Why is the Hurd useful?"]]

What are the advantages with the Hurd over Linux? (In general of course, nothing
in depth)

> Flexibility for the user:
> 
> transparent ftp
> 
>     $ cd /ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian
>     $ ls
> 
> personnal filesystem
> 
>     $ dd < /dev/zero > myspace.img bs=1M count=1024
>     $ mke2fs myspace.img
>     $ settrans myspace /hurd/ext2fs myspace.img
>     $ cd myspace

>> Just curious, but I keep seeing these (and other similar) concepts being
>> brought up as the amazing selling points of the Hurd, but all of this is
>> entirely doable now in Linux with FUSE or things like it.

>>> Nowadays, at LAST, yes, partly.
>>> And only on machines where fuse is enabled. Is it enabled on the servers you have an account on?

>> I'm not sure if an ftp filesystem has been implemented for FUSE yet, but its
>> definately doable; and loopback filesystems like in your second example have
>> been supported for years.

>>> As a normal user?  And establish a tap interface connected through ppp over
>>> ssh or whatever you could want to imagine?

>>  What, then, are the major selling points or benefits?

>>> These were just examples, Linux is trying to catch up in ugly ways indeed
>>> (yes, have a look at the details of fuse, it's deemed to be inefficient).
>>> In the Hurd, it's that way from the _ground_ and there is no limitation
>>> like having to be root or ask for root to add magic lines, etc.