Wanting to see what the Hurd looks like...
$ wget http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/11.0/hurd-i386/debian-hurd.img.tar.xz
$ tar xJf debian-hurd.img.tar.xz
followed by
$ aptitude install qemu-system-x86-64
followed by
$ kvm -m 1G -drive file=$(echo debian-hurd*.img),cache=writeback,format=raw &
This got me to a QEMU window, with a GRUB screen ready to boot the Hurd. At this point, the keyboard works. When I select the default selection, eventually I get to a login prompt, but the keyboard is non-responsive. If I click my mouse inside the window and move it around a bit, I finally get a message saying the mouse queue is full.
If, instead of booting into the default selection in GRUB, I select the Advanced option and then the Recovery option, I can get to a login, where the keyboard works, and I can log in and do some command-line things. When I type "exit", it finishes booting (I assume, as if I had selected the default setting in GRUB), and again, once I get to the login prompt, the keyboard is dead.
I do see some errors on the screen. Here's what I see on-screen:
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Timeout reached while wating [sic] for return value
/bin/console: Could not receive return value from daemon process: Connection timed out
Starting enhanced syslogd: rsyslogdrsyslogd: could not load module 'imklog', errors: trying to load module /usr/lib/i386-gnu/rsyslog/imklog.so: /user/lib/i386-gnu/rsyslog/imklog.so: undefined symbol: klogWillRunPrePrivDrop [v.8.39.0 try
http://www.rsyslog.com/e/2066 ]
.
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