It’s hard to turn a news item like this into a front page item, but I’m going to try anyway, because I think it’s pretty cool news. As we all know, Debian supports a number of architectures as ‘release architectures’, but what some of you may not be aware of is that Debian also supports a number of kernels other than Linux. One of those, the FreeBSD kernel, has been promoted to release status, putting it on equal footing with the Linux variant.
Debian supports a whole number of architectures as release architectures, namelyi386, amd64, PowerPC, SPARC, DEC Alpha, ARM, MIPS, HPPA, S390, and IA-64 (Itanium). Al these ports use the Linux kernel. Debian also has a number of ports using different kernels, such as Debian GNU/Hurd, Debian GNU/NetBSD, and Debian GNU/kFreeBSD. This last one has now been deemed stable enough to join the various Linux architecture ports in release status.
“The Debian Release Team is pleased to announce that it sees the port of the Debian system to the FreeBSD kernel fit to be handled equal with the other release ports,” the Debian Release Team writes, “The upcoming release codenamed ‘Squeeze’ is planned to be the first Debian distribution to be released with Linux and FreeBSD kernels.”
The Debian GNU/kFreeBSD port will support the i386 and amd64 architectures. The ‘k’ in kFreeBSD refers to the way the system is designed; it uses only the FreeBSD kernel, but retains the GNU and Debian tools, and plasters those on top. The Release Team aims to provide as much choice of kernels as possible. They also do it to “include a kernel that provides features such as jails, the OpenBSD Packet Filter and support for NDIS drivers in the mainline kernel with full support”.
Debian squeeze is planned for spring 2010.
Maybe we will someday see ZFS on Ubuntu Server!
Take it you’ve not heard about Nexenta Core?
http://www.nexenta.org
Its Ubuntu with an OpenSolaris kernel.
How’s it developing? A while ago I tried it but had enough problems that I went with OpenSolaris for my fileserver instead, despite being much more familiar with the Debian/Ubuntu userland.
In the past I had also tried ZFS on FreeBSD but found that it locked up. I’ve also heard of people using ZFS over fuse but this never appealed to me.
I run it and find it to be of Beta quality at best and the support they offer is abysmal.
That said, when it’s behaving (which, to be fair, is the majorety of the time) it’s a great OS.
Hmm, I haven’t seen Nexenta before. It does look nice, but I would greatly prefer seeing Ubuntu running on *BSD than Solaris.
I look forward to Debian not just on Linux but a first class citizen on FreeBSD.
Me too.
And: CONGRATS!
I will test it and use it. DEB packages on Freebsd is a must. I am also waiting (crossing fingers) on Debian QNX.
Isn’t QNX closed?
http://qnx.com/news/pr_2471_1.html
http://qnx.com/news/pr_2982_1.html
http://qnx.com/news/pr_2519_1.html
(and others, just google)
I know it for a long time, but I’ve never actually gave it a try, so it’s time for it I guess.
Anyways – I always preffered pure *BSDs for the quality of code and for the logically structured order, which is absent in Debian and linux in general. That’s why I think that’s a poor idea to mix FreeBSD kernel and Linux userland altogether. In fact – the most valuable part of the BSD is the userland and the base system [+ kernel].
It’d be interresting to try Mach/Debian though …
So, can I use the linux nvidia drivers? Since, there isn’t a BSD x64 Nvidia driver? Or is it no way jose?
That is a bit of a noob question 😉 No, the FreeBSD kernel is not binary-compatible with the Linux kernel, so the Linux Nvidia driver will not work.
Can you just swap between kernels in an existing Debian installation, or is it more difficult than that?
Well I run PC-BSD x32 (because it’s very noob friendly, the way I like it
and I am wanting to run a 64 bit version, but there are not any Nvidia drivers. I thought maybe this could solve it. Thanks for answering my question so quickly.
I thought this was a very interesting development from the Debian camp when the news of the Kfreebsd kernel first emerged some time ago. As a long time fan and user of Debian I look forward to trying this out!
All of the goodness of the FreeBSD kernel (including the outstanding pf firewall), coupled with Debian goodies like apt.
Excellent work, devs! Really looking forward to trying this out.
FreeBSD kernel + apt .. yummy!
Mantaining a lot of FreeBSD servers had become a pita (the ports are very nice if you want bleeding edge, but i need more stability than they can provide), so I switched to Centos, but maybe I will look back.
Congratulations to the Debian project!
I think this is really cool. As far as I’m concerned it is worth of front page status – it’s quite awesome OS news, after all!
I *do* have a certain amount of trouble imagining quite what I’d use a Debian kFreeBSD system for but I’d be really tempted to have one anyhow.
This comment really made my day. I laughed out loud. How tech people feel! I’m not poking fun by the way, I had the same reaction, its like looking at some really fabulous, well made tool, that is perfectly adapted to doing something one has no need to do, but you sort of want one anyway.
And that’s why we all love Debian!
It is front page news! Great job. I actually had forgotten about this project…
Now Debian could get off their a**es and start doing some work on the Hurd, too. 😉
Well, I see the smile, but they create a distro, not kernels. But yes, it would be nice to see a somewhat bigger activity around Hurd.
Regarding the new above, it’s really totally front page news, this is a major one for all Debian users and fans. Really great, and I’m sending my virtual pat on the back for all those involved in making this finally happen.
Excellent work, thank you Debian GNU/kFreeBSD team. I hope we will soon also see Debian FreeBSD (so, with the FreeBSD userland), APT-managed FreeBSD would be great.
At any rate, it’s nice to have pf, jails, and GEOM in a Debian world.
I was able to install Debian kFreeBSD using the ported Debian installer.
I used the installer from:
[1] http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/kfreebsd-amd64/
[2] http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/kfreebsd-i386/
I did that under VMWare. Also the ISO is only 12MB, so it is a net-install. In the end I had a working Gnome installation out of the box.
I am only missing now Java 1.6. Only Java 1.5 is now available.
Debian kFreeBSD will make Debian more independent OS.
It will increase the package quality as it will force some package maintainers and developers to remove kernel dependent code, and we all agree that kernel dependent code is definitely not a good practice.
In some cases the multi-core support in Freebsd might suit your needs better and you will still be using Debian.
My original post:
http://debian.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/~toncho/myblog/archives/254-Debian-k…
Hmm… I can’t see from the screenshot if it’s (the old) Debian-modified version of the FreeBSD installer or if it’s a (new) version of the Debian-installer that can install Debian GNU/kFreeBSD. So, which is it?
A ported version of the Debian Installer is used:
http://socghop.appspot.com/student_project/show/google/gsoc2009/deb…
There are people that dont think Linux is the most optimal kernel for server usage. This is good for all parts! “
That is actually one of the reasons why I started the effort to run a Debian userspace on FreeBSD in the first place, back in 2002. Let me point out that at the time 2.4 was the current linux kernel, and it was nowhere near as well run as 2.6 has been.
Also, having maintained production systems on Debian for years, I was convinced at that time that Debian is superior to every other system available in terms of maintenance and ease of upgrades.
I was not as sold on Linux.
I have yet to find a really strong reason for doing so.
I’m quite happy with my linux/debian system and my freebsd systems.
Both kernels offer very similar features with minor exceptions (usually, things exist as patches like jails) and arguably similar performance.
The userland is all BSD licensed which makes things easy when you are using this in a company. Also, the BSD userland is pretty good. The port system is also quite fine. Maybe all that people wanted was a binary repo for the ports, but decided to switch the whole userland to GPL-licensed programs to do so.
This is what I fantasise about, and a long term supported repo from which I could update my servers.
Freebsd-update is good, but it only covers the very base system. Maybe enterprisebsd.com will get there, should the project ever start. I’d like to see FreeBSD taking back the datacentres.
Thats the main reason why a lot of people left BSD’s – atleast from the desktop space and some even the server space. The binary package management system is still stuck in the 80s. Just try updating OpenOffice (personal experience) and seeing all the broken ports, packages and ports not playing well with each other, etc.
I will give this Debian/FreeBSD a try. Maybe they will get this right.
Question is if it’s possible to execute aptitude/apt-get install freebsd-kernel or something like that, configure (if required), reboot and run Debian/kFreeBSD.
No, you have to have the whole userland compiled specifically for Debian GNU/kFreeBSD. (Not counting the Linux compatibility/emulation layer you can use to run some closed source apps)
aptitude install freebsd-stack then?
Technically it shouldn’t be a problem I think.
No to get to technical here, but THIS IS FREAKIN’ AWESOME!
Sounds better than any other chocolate & peanut-butter incident I’ve read about.
Is the kNetBSD port completely dead now? I didn’t see anything looking back through the past few months’ debian-bsd archives.
Also, this kinda should fall into the “not news” category; Debian’s been the only real GNU/Hurd distribution for a long time now. Kernel-independence has long been a Debian project goal.
I am waiting to see some movement on the Hurd front, really hope that project goes somewhere. Bring on Debian GNU/Hurd K17 soon please
Using the The POSIX environment subsystem. So Mr Stallman can refere to it as “Deabian GNU\Windows”.
Personally, I kind of like the *BSD idea that you keep the basic Unix-like operating system (kernel + userland) stable while the applications have a “rolling release” updating scheme. Linux (the kernel part of the GNU/Linux operating system) changes way too often and breaks stuff also way too often.
Debian GNU/Linux already has a “testing” branch where applications get “rolling release”-style updates, but also the basic operating system (Linux + GNU) changes all the time — and I don’t particularly like that.
I’d much prefer to use a *BSD system, but none of the *BSD flavours seems to support the latest versions of LyX. I’m an academic who uses LyX as my basic document editor, and I prefer to use the new features that the latest LyX offers.
So Debian/kFreeBSD could be the solution to my problems with GNU/Linux. If it can offer the stability of *BSD plus the latest versions of applications (like LyX), then I’m all for it.
Any idea if there’s a version of the Debian-installer that already supports GNU/kFreeBSD?
To answer my own question, apparently there has been a 2009 Google Summer of Code project for porting the debian-installer to support Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, but it’s currently still a work in progress. Additional info can be found here:
http://slackydeb.blogspot.com/search/label/gsoc
http://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD
Yes, I have used it:
[1] http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/kfreebsd-amd64/
[2] http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/kfreebsd-i386/
http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/kfreebsd-i386/daily/monolithic/m…
http://socghop.appspot.com/student_project/show/google/gsoc2009/deb…