Debian gives FreeBSD some love

Posted at 10:18am on Thursday October 8th 2009

Netcraft hasn't confirmed it, but the upcoming release of Debian, codenamed Squeeze, will be available in a juicy new FreeBSD flavour alongside the regular Linux version. Well, Debian GNU/kFreeBSD has been around for a while, but now it will be an official part of the distro, combining the titanium-strength FreeBSD kernel with the GNU C library and userland utilities that we all know and love.

Some of the benefits of including a FreeBSD kernel are jails (a chroot-like system), the OpenBSD Packet Filter and mainline kernel support for NDIS drivers. Could this pave the way for other kernels to work their way into the Debian ecosystem? Would you love to run Debian GNU/FreeDOS? Let us know your most-requested GNU/somethings below...

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Your comments

Mac?

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - October 8, 2009 @ 10:53am

I know I know GNU/OSX oh wait.

More like BSD/

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - October 8, 2009 @ 11:20am

I'd rather see a port of the FreeBSD user-land into Debian with the Linux kernel. Should make things interesting.

Actually none.

BubbaT (not verified) - October 8, 2009 @ 11:28am

You could try Windows, but then you don't get GNU/Windows, you get cygwin.

You could try BeOS but then you get--BeOS.

You could try VMS, AmigaOS or GEM but then...

What people forget is that before Linux the GNU tools worked on lots of different platforms ( actually they still do ).

The amazing thing is the growth of "GNU" after Linux.
( By GNU I mean anything that would be packed with debian and is "free". )

In the early days of Linux, you had X11 alone with twm, a few other (fvwm) the biggest being Motif and a funny thing called "interviews" ( which became freso ). Now you have XFCE,KDE and Gnome. You also have a browser, an extended compiler set, music players, movie players, web browsers, web servers, Gimp, databases, a variety of more sophisticated scripting languages etc.

It's all about choice.

RestInPieces (not verified) - October 8, 2009 @ 1:08pm

The Linux kernel is great but there are some areas where the FreeBSD kernel would be more desirable. I welcome the addition of choice. That's what open source is all about. The thought of a FreeBSD based Ubuntu makes me drool.

GNU/Minix

Bjørnar Berge (not verified) - October 8, 2009 @ 4:05pm

I would like to see a Debian GNU/Minix. It would be interesting having a full Minix distro with a fully configured DE, Xfce maybe? It would be cool to have a GNU system with a microkernel, and i don't think the HURD will be ready anytime soon.

Debian GNU/Solaris I know

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - October 8, 2009 @ 4:29pm

Debian GNU/Solaris

I know thats Nexenta, but I have found it extremely buggy.

>You could try BeOS but then

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - October 8, 2009 @ 6:55pm

>You could try BeOS but then you get--BeOS

So? thats a good thing. Also, isn't that Haiku?

>You could try VMS, AmigaOS or GEM but then...

When did GEM get a kernal?

Looking forward

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - October 8, 2009 @ 11:55pm

Looking forward to playing around with this one. If it works out well in my test scenario well, then I think I found myself a sweet server OS!

Almost entirely pointless

Mike_IronFist (not verified) - October 9, 2009 @ 1:47am

Who really needs Debian/kFreeBSD? I mean, the BSD's are just free Unix, much like Linux. The way I see it, unless you have some hardcore political views about software, and love the BSD license, I doubt Debian/kFreeBSD means anything to you as an end-user.

There might, of course, be those who argue the merits of the BSD kernel over the Linux kernel and maybe claim it's better, more efficient, faster, blahblahblah. I say that with open-source kernels, there are infinite ways to implement them, and so there's infinite ways to weak performance and all that.

So really there is no reason to clamor for Debian/kFreeBSD. It is to Debian/GNU/Linux what an alligator is to a crocodile.

Oh rly?

Qjet (not verified) - October 9, 2009 @ 9:20am

I dunno Mike. I know plenty of people who view the distinction between a linux operating system and a microsoft one to be "just another way to do something".

Of course thats not to linux is to BSD as microsoft is to linux.

Personally I view that if the software easily inter-operates then the notion of "Well linux works so just use that" seems silly. Since it's that very idea that we must fight if we are to get linux adopted by more of the general public. Right?

How about GNU/GEM or

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - October 16, 2009 @ 9:40pm

How about GNU/GEM or GNU/PostGreSQL?

I would like to see an article or two on PostgreSQL in Linux Format - most often we see MSQL or its light version rather than the former which I think has more going for it than the latter!

Anonymous penguin