Debian developer Robert Millan talks about recent improvements with Debian GNU/kFreeBSD in the past few weeks.
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Member since:
2006-03-02
This is a serious question. These people are basically just taking everything we normally run on top of Linux and instead making it work on top of a FreeBSD kernel.
It seems to me that Linux tends to get a lot more developer attention than FreeBSD. It seems plausble, therefore, that Linux may be generally further ahead in terms of performance and other advancements.
So what is the advantage of switching to the FreeBSD kernel? I mean, why are they motivated to do it? And why would anyone want to use this?
Member since:2009-06-20
Member since:2005-07-06
RE[2]: Why FreeBSD kernel?
Member since:2006-05-19
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. We need more FUD and probably reference to that bizarre Linus guy. Don't know about you, but I'm totally not convinced why kFreeBSD at all."
Thank GOD you are not with FreeBSD. About spreading FUD- what you did just now?
FreeBSD got jails for ages but I never saw any jail real-life use in Linux and I am LPIC certified specialist.
About ZFS you are totally wrong- ZFS main feature is partitionless usage, self-healing and deduplication.
FreeBSD is alternative to Linux and get used to it. Every work should be done with right tools and sometimes Linux won't cut it. I see lots of five or more year old Linux installations and noone will update them because nobody can be sure it will survice any upgrade at all... You can do it with FreeBSD any time.
YMMW
Member since:2008-11-19
And why wouldn't you want to do that? Why another OS? Why another distribution of Linux? Why a fork of this or that?
You post a comment on a site that is (at least partly) dedicated to post news about the myriad of operating systems in the history of computers, and you question why would anyone want to port a specific userland to another operating system? It's what people do! 
Alot of people chose FreeBSD over Linux, me included. It's called personal preference and one should always respect that in the end. The more choice in the world the better!
Member since:2006-06-09
Please don't take my comment out of context. I was referring to particular lines in the original file. I am perfectly fine with FreeBSD as it is, and I would be glad to see Debian/kFreeBSD project develop further since someone is motivated enough to do it.
Linux-vserver comes to mind and openvz. And from security only point, AppArmor.
ZFS is good. But I'm not so sure these enterprise-oriented features provide substantial improvements in performance/stability for an average user. The original file promised this.
That's true.
What kind of upgrade are you referring to? Do you mean an LTS (long term support) Ubuntu won't be able to dist-upgrade during its' support life cycle? I seriously doubt it - it is kept stable. I'm not even talking RHEL or SLES here.
Now, if we're about upgrading to a newer release version, then, of course, it might break if you skip a couple of versions. All version upgrades are meant to happen incrementally one by one and normally this is the only supported way to do it.
How come you 'can do it any time' when if there's a new version of a particular package, there's always a chance for breakage of your specific configuration. No way I would believe FreeBSD devs and pkg maintainers or upgrade system are that perfect. One should always test before upgrading anything, especially if it is on an important system.
Please, I'm not trying to bash FreeBSD in any way. I was just curious whether there's really something big enough to kFreeBSD to motivate people to work in that way. And since someone is motivated, let it be.
Personally, I'm not holding my breath.
Member since:2006-12-08
As far as I know the main reason why people invest in the FreeBSD kernel is because some companies prefer a kernel that they can customize without having to publish their modifications.
Member since:2011-03-12
It seems to me that Linux tends to get a lot more developer attention than FreeBSD. It seems plausble, therefore, that Linux may be generally further ahead in terms of performance and other advancements.
I think you are wrong, FreeBSD does better in many things, but Phoronix did an independent analysis for the specific Debian kFreeBSD effort:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=debian_kfreebsd_...
Member since:2006-05-19
I always wonder, why every time Phoronix compares different Linux and FreeBSD versions that does not mach development cycle? If you compare current Linux then you should compare it to FreeBSD 9 development (now Beta1) not 8.something. And they always leave debugging on- of course FreeBSD will be slower.
Member since:2011-03-12
Not that Phoronix's tests actually show anything but ... check the date.
Member since:
2008-07-07
Good to know that, but my experience with the OS is quite discouraging. The 8-1.1 kernel based release I was able to install, but it froze at the login screen. Apparently, letting the installer update the system while it was being installed made it eventually unusable. That seems to be a known problem.
A 8-2.1 kernel based testing release was just broken: its installation was perceivably quicker, but something just went wrong before the last packages were installed.
There's something that has to be done about the partitioner: it takes too long to do anything with it and does a lot of useless grinding for a very long time for no reason at all.
Member since:2007-09-22