about GNU variants

GNU variants is a term used by the Free Software Foundation to refer to operating systems which use GNU C Library,
with application software and system libraries (in other words, the core userland) from GNU.

Hurd variants

Debian GNU/Hurd was discussed for a release as technology preview with Debian 7.0 Wheezy, however these plans were discarded due to the immature state of the system.However the maintainers of Debian GNU/Hurd decided to publish an unofficial release on the release date of Debian 7.0. Debian GNU/Hurd is not considered yet to provide the performance and stability expected from a production system. Among the open issues are incomplete implementation of java and X.org graphical user interfaces and limited hardware driver support. About two thirds of the Debian packages have been ported to Hurd.

Arch Hurd is a derivative work of Arch Linux, porting it to the GNU Hurd system with packages optimised for the Intel P6 architecture. Their goal is to provide an Arch-like user environment (BSD-style init scripts, Pacman package manager, rolling releases, and a simple set up) on the GNU Hurd which is stable enough for at least occasional use. Currently it provides a LiveCD for evaluation purposes and installations guides for LiveCD and conventional installation.

Linux variants

The term GNU/Linux is used by some to refer to an operating system where the Linux kernel is distributed with a GNU system software (userland and GNU C Library). Suchdistributions are the primary installed base of GNU packages and programs and also of Linux. The most notable official use of this term for a distribution is Debian GNU/Linux.

BSD variants

Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is an operating system for IA-32 and x86-64 computer architectures. It is a distribution of GNU with Debian package management and the kernel of FreeBSD. The k in kFreeBSD is an abbreviation for kernel of, and reflects the fact that only the kernel of the complete FreeBSD operating system is used. The operating system was officially released with Debian Squeeze (6.0) on February 6, 2011. One Debian GNU/kFreeBSD live CD is Ging, which is no longer maintained.

Debian GNU/NetBSD was an experimental port of GNU user-land applications to NetBSD kernel. No official release of this operating system was made; although work was conducted on ports for the IA-32 and DEC Alpha architectures, it has not seen active maintenance since 2002 and is no longer available for download.

OpenSolaris (Illumos) variants

Nexenta OS is the first distribution that combines the GNU userland (with the exception of libc; OpenSolaris' libc is used) and Debian's packaging and organisation with the OpenSolaris kernel. Nexenta OS is available for IA-32 and x86-64 based systems. Nexenta Systems, Inc initiated the project and sponsors its continued development.(Nexenta OS is not GNU variant, due use OpenSolaris libc and multiple Illumos Distributions use GNU userland as default)