[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998, 2008, 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc."]] [[!meta license="Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved."]] [[!meta title="The Hurd and Linux"]] [[!tag stable_URL]] by <A HREF="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</A>. <P> People sometimes ask, ``Why did the FSF develop a new free kernel instead of using Linux?'' It's a reasonable question. The answer, briefly, is that that is not the question we faced. <P> When we started developing the Hurd in 1990, the question facing us was, ``How can we get a free kernel for the GNU system?'' There was no free Unix-like kernel then, and we knew of no other plan to write one. The only way we could expect to have a free kernel was to write it ourselves. So we started. <P> We heard about Linux after its release. At that time, the question facing us was, ``Should we cancel the Hurd project and use Linux instead?'' <P> We heard that Linux was not at all portable (this may not be true today, but that's what we heard then). And we heard that Linux was architecturally on a par with the Unix kernel; our work was leading to something much more powerful. <P> Given the years of work we had already put into the Hurd, we decided to finish it rather than throw them away. <P> If we did face the question that people ask---if Linux were already available, and we were considering whether to start writing another kernel---we would not do it. Instead we would choose another project, something to do a job that no existing free software can do. <P> But we did start the Hurd, back then, and now we have made it work. We hope its superior architecture will make free operating systems more powerful.