You may not be aware that FreeBSD has a pretty robust set of tools to run Linux binaries, unmodified.
The result? A fast, smooth, fully-featured remote development experience on FreeBSD running Linux binaries transparently via the Linuxulator.
It genuinely feels like magic.
More importantly, it’s a testament to how stable the Linux ABI itself is and how well FreeBSD’s Linuxulator implements it. This setup completely changed how I work with FreeBSD, and it finally removed one of the biggest friction points in my workflow.
↫ Hayzam Sherif
FreeBSD’s Linux compatibility does kind of feel like magic. There’s people running Steam and Steam games on FreeBSD using these very same technologies, and while it’s far from perfect, it works for quite a few games without any issues. It’d be great is Steam ever made it to FreeBSD natively, but sine that’s probably not going to happen any time soon, it’s great to see that those of us using FreeBSD can still play at least some Steam games just fine.
Even more amazing, to me at least, FreeBSD now supports OCI containers (Docker containers) and, due to the same Linuxulator layer, you can run normal Linux containers on FreeBSD using podman.
Here it is running Alpine Linux in a container on FreeBSD:
https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/oci-containers-on-freebsd/
I am not sure if anybody has tried to get Distrobox to work but I do not see why it would not.
LeFantome,
That is pretty cool. It opens up the possibility of running freebsd on the host in places where I would have otherwise provisioned a linux distro by default.
TBH I probably won’t switch, something about teaching an old dog new tricks, but I do think it’s awesome to be able to support containers across platforms.
@Alfman
Ya, I think the motivation is to be able to run Kubernetes on FreeBSD.
It is worth noting that NetBSD does something similar:
https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-linux.html
Apparently it is improving in NetBSD 11:
https://www.netbsd.org/releases/formal-11/NetBSD-11.0.html
Now it would be funny if someone released an Android device running FreeBSD.
jgfenix,
Awesome idea, I’d give it a go 🙂
While android technically uses the linux kernel, it’s ironically difficult to make good use of linux software on android. FreeBSD offering an authentic unix experience would likely be better than stock android. Of course the big issue with ARM devices is always compatibility, which is one of the most frustrating aspects of alt-OS on mobile.
Alfman,
At one point it was pretty simple.
Samsung DeX used to offer actual full Linux desktop on their top end Note devices. I used to own one. However with a major OS update, they deleted the feature to be replaced with a fake “desktop” made of tablet style Android UI.
Back then you could run a whole Linux distribution, including vscode. After all the phone has 12GB of RAM and lots of storage. Why not use that?