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Nils-TUD
Escape
C++2014–2025
Nils-TUD / Escape

Escape

Escape is a UNIX-like microkernel operating system that runs on x86, x86_64, ECO32 and MMIX.

2Distinct people
2Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
199GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Escape is a UNIX-like microkernel operating system that runs on x86, x86_64, ECO32 and MMIX.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

At this point? None. It's a silly exercise on not going anywhere. HURD uses Mach, which is a mid-90s academic microkernel that's not so good in practice. Particularly, it's so…

snvzz used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year2 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2014-06-07 19:26:18 UTC to 2025-06-04 22:52:37 UTC.

012014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20142015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments20192020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

2 sources
MIX/MMIX is assembly language level programming. MIX/MMIX home page : https://mmix.cs.hm.edu/ MMIX supplement : https://mmix.cs.hm.edu/supplement/index.html --------- Per GNU MIX development kit (mdk)[0] intro "... a set of utilities for developing programs using Donald Knuth’s MIX mythical computer and MIXAL, its assembly language." The tutorial goes over architecture, instruction set, MIXAL related stuff and basic "getting started". Something a bit above "bare metal programming"; Escape is an OS that runs on GIMMIX as a simulator for MMIX.[7] DXL is a similar architechture.[1] MMIX is more 'current'[2] aka easier to find tutorial information on RISC architectures. Few 'intro to computer architecture'[3] -- depends on how want to approach. aka, high level overview, how things work 'bitwise" vs. abstract level one step above the bits, "st
Read the rest
ack"/instructional queue A RISC Computer for the Third Millennium[4] related MIX/MMIX resources[5] Random search engine 'computer architure' online courses pick[6] ---- [0](June/04/2025) : https://www.gnu.org/software/mdk/manual/html_node/index.html... GNU MIX Development Kit (MDK) : https://www.gnu.org/software/mdk/ [1] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLX [2] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMIX [3] : https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-introductory-texts-o... [4] : https://github.com/ascherer/mmix [5] : https://mmix.cs.hm.edu/links.html [6] :https://github.com/Developer-Y/cs-video-courses#computer-org... [7] : Escape : https://github.com/Nils-TUD/Escape GIMMX : https://homepages.thm.de/~hg53/gimmix/
In Is there some way to better understand TAOCP Vol 1 by Knuth?
snvzz·Jun 7, 2014Recommendation phrase
At this point? None. It's a silly exercise on not going anywhere. HURD uses Mach, which is a mid-90s academic microkernel that's not so good in practice. Particularly, it's so slow at IPC (which is critical to performance in a pure microkernel system) that those using it (Darwin/OSX/IOS, HURD) had to compromise and use a hybrid architecture: Running drivers and some other components of the system with kernel privileges; A popular design choice in the 90s (also BeOS, Windows NT) due to the immaturity of microkernels. In late 90s/early 2000s, L4 happened. It went to great lengths to actually make achieving performance with a pure microkernel architecture possible. Afterwards, there were a lot of followup microkernels implementing the L4 interface, so these days when we say L4 we generally mean the interface, or any microkernel that implemen
Read the rest
ts it. The HURD was watching, and sometime early 2000s they realized that the hybrid architecture was dead and they needed to move on if they wanted to stay relevant. There was a serious attempt at porting HURD to L4. It was already working, but the people behind it became disillusioned with the HURD, after realizing flaws on the architecture. I recommend reading the papers the L4 port people wrote on this. Back then, there were some ten to twenty HURD developers active. After that, the HURD should have rethought its architecture and moved on with L4. Instead, they didn't continue the L4 effort nor fix the architecture. What they did was abandon it and start an entirely new port to a different microkernel, Coyotos, which didn't bear fruit, either. Throughout all this, the HURD was losing developers as they became disinterested. Fast forward to 2005, Andrew Tanenbaum and his students released the first version (a mere skeleton, without even virtual memory support) of Minix3, and continued working from there http://wiki.minix3.org/MinixReleases , going a long way and bringing us to its current state. Right now, Minix3 has 20-30 active developers any given day, a few of which are working on it full-time, supported by funds coming from European Union research programs, as the reliability aspect http://www.minix3.org/other/reliability.html to Minix3 has been deemed important. Meanwhile, the HURD has 0-3 active developers depending on the day, none of which working full time, and with no roadmap or organization whatsoever. Last I've heard, they introduced userspace driver support, which is a step in the right direction, but a bit silly as the real problem (they're still using Mach) is yet to be solved. Minix3 next version, 3.3.0, is weeks away. Here's some insider info: It breaks ABI to adopt NetBSD types, skyrocketing compatibility with pkgsrc software. The system will for the first time be built dynamic, as mmap() is finally working and the dynamic library support has been adapted to actually do shared libraries using it. As lack of proper dynamic library support was holding back X (which already ran, but with barely any software for it), I expect we'll have a lot of WMs, DEs and GUI programs from here on, and interest will pick up. If you ask me about the HURD, I'd say it's not worth continuing. Just take along whatever salvageable ideas and concepts and move on. Working on a system that isn't at a dead end is one suggestion. Escape https://github.com/Nils-TUD/Escape , HelenOS and Minix3 are three such systems. Genode is not exactly a system but it is interesting in its own way, and Plan9Front http://ninetimes.cat-v.org/ is very interesting even though it is not currently a pure microkernel system (it can be made so without breaking anything thanks to the awesome design). All these systems I suggested are Free Software, interesting, promising and actually active.
In What are the advantages of the Hurd over Linux/BSD? (2013)

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