@meeper >linux is a mess
That's why GNU has blessed up with GNU Linux-libre

>hurd never going to see the light of day :(
It works fine in my testing and boots straight into GNU emacs.

>too much of the basic gnu utterly reeks of unix
I don't get how you come to that conclusion, as GNU's Not Unix and doesn't contain any code from Unix.

GNU is designed to be compatible with Unix, but goes much further beyond.