Let me add some more details. The Hurd runs really well on 32-bit x86 (Intel only). I'm running it on an IBM T43 with 1.5 GB of RAM. It can use 4GB of RAM. My T43 runs i3, emacs, netsurf, and I use that machine to edit the Hurd wiki. It works just fine.
There are people running the Hurd on a T410 (10 year old laptop), though it is a little wonky to install. I'm trying to install it currently, and I am having issues getting it to boot. I'll blog about it once I get it working at https://gnucode.me
There is a working X86_64 bit port of the Hurd. As far as I know, the 64-bit version can use much more RAM, but I do not know for sure. The 64-bit version still needs some fixing, because for some reason it cannot properly build packages. Not sure why. 65% of the Debian packages work on the Hurd. That's not too bad.
Also we just ported Rust. We have a slowly working SMP for 32-bit. It's actually faster to use non-SMP at the moment. :(
The FAQ says it's limited to either "830 MiB" or "1.7 GiB", depending on whether you go by the title or the text of the page. If that's out of date, you should probably update it. :)
> There is a working X86_64 bit port of the Hurd. [...] The 64-bit version still needs some fixing, because for some reason it cannot properly build packages.
That doesn't sound like it's quite "working" yet, then -- especially if, as some of the mailing list posts suggest, it's crashing randomly during builds. Good to hear that's being worked on, though; the writing is clearly on the wall for i386.
There are people running the Hurd on a T410 (10 year old laptop), though it is a little wonky to install. I'm trying to install it currently, and I am having issues getting it to boot. I'll blog about it once I get it working at https://gnucode.me
There is a working X86_64 bit port of the Hurd. As far as I know, the 64-bit version can use much more RAM, but I do not know for sure. The 64-bit version still needs some fixing, because for some reason it cannot properly build packages. Not sure why. 65% of the Debian packages work on the Hurd. That's not too bad.
Also we just ported Rust. We have a slowly working SMP for 32-bit. It's actually faster to use non-SMP at the moment. :(
Am I biased? Yes. I wrote this qoth.