[LMMojo]

I don't ever remember being 'stuck' with GNU Hurd. It was a "non-product" with a little more evidence of progress than Duke Nukem Forever. Back in those days, I used SunOS (later Solaris), HP-UX, DEC Ultrix, IBM AIX, Tandem Guardian and SGI Irix.

[ndnxhs]

The point is no one would try to make Linux because someone already tried hurd

[themacguffinman]

The more likely outcome is that GNU Hurd would be developed to be similar to Linux if Linus chose to stick with existing projects instead.

Linux had real improvements over Hurd but it'd be silly to suggest that a separate "Linux" brand kernel needed to exist to make those improvements possible.