Debian Gets FreeBSD Kernel Support 425
mu22le writes "Today Debian gets one step closer to really becoming 'the universal operating system' by adding two architectures based on the FreeBSD kernel to the unstable archive.
This does not mean that the Debian project is ditching the Linux kernel; Debian users will be able to choose which kernel they want to install (at least on on the i386 and amd64 architectures) and get more or less the same Debian operating system they are used to.
This makes Debian the first distribution, and probably the first large OS, to support two completely different kernels at the same time."
Gentoo Did This Years Ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:APT? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it essentially just FreeBSD with APT and gnu userland instead of ports and bsd userland?
It's FreeBSD with the entire Debian userland. AND it's Debian with a FreeBSD kernel. Pretty much like a centaur is a man with a horse's body AND a horse with a human head.
The best description depends on what part you focus on. To me it's Debian with a FreeBSD kernel.
Re:ZFS support (Score:1, Insightful)
Personally though, I can't see the point.
The unified FreeBSD userland is what makes it so great, rather than some cobbled together collection of GNU shit, written by a hundred different people who decide that manpages aren't good enough, to use info instead and hence, there is never any current documentation.
"OMG but you can apt-get stuff". Who gives a shit. pkg_add -r does basically the same thing anyway, and "cd /usr/ports/xxx/foobarport && make package" makes a lot more sense to me than the commands required on linux to build packages...
Don't get me wrong, as far as LINUX goes, its debian for me. I just don't see the requirement to have a shitty GNU userland on the FreeBSD system.
Re:I run Debian, and I run FreeBSD. (Score:5, Insightful)
*faster boot (i think)
As an honest question (from someone who, not that it matters, runs both slackware at home and xp at work), what's with the obsession with boot time? Can anyone explain why the free software community is so obsessed with this metric? I understand that embedded devices are better when they boot immediately - nobody wants to have to wait to make toast - but to boot a computer? Don't most people just sleep or hibernate their computer these days anyway? I think that before yesterday, the last time I rebooted this machine was a couple months ago. I don't mean this as a slight - it's an honest question.
Re:I run Debian, and I run FreeBSD. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I run Debian, and I run FreeBSD. (Score:3, Insightful)
It probably comes from the earlier days, where people were using things like Pentium 1 machines with 32MB RAM, and had badly tuned distributions that offered to install everything.
The user, not really knowing what they wanted went with that option, expecting something like a complete Windows install. The result would be a machine that took 5 minutes from the moment the kernel started loading, due to loading apache, portmap, bind, NIS, and a whole lot of other things most people had no clue what they were for.
These days it's not near so bad, but I guess the geeky interest in optimizing everything to the max remains. And if the computer can boot in one minute instead of two with no loss of functionality, why not?
What's the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not just run FreeBSD with a real BSD userland and ports system? I'm just curious why you would use a BSD kernel but keep a Debian userland when it would probably be more reliable to just use FreeBSD's userland too.
Re:ZFS support (Score:3, Insightful)
"Far better?" Do you have an example? Generally, there's a feeling among BSD users that their tools are superior in quality and documentation. The man pages as well as the handbook are fantastic and explain everything you'd want to know. It's like you get an actual manual with your new UNIX-based workstation.
There are efforts to replace the non-modular GCC because FSF purposely obfuscated it to prevent people from easily making extensions (something Slashdotters would criticize if a commercial company had done). Goofy crap like that is poor quality software and poor attitude that more practical users have no time for.
Re:ports-- (Score:3, Insightful)
Poor package management? Ports is one of the best I've ever used. What problems did you have?
What's the point? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I run Debian, and I run FreeBSD. (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple reasons for quicker boot:
kernel or driver updates that cannot be dynamically unloaded and reloaded require a reboot. If you want to keep your system patched up to fix bugs and insecurities you will need to reboot at some point. Might sound like a trivial scenario but a long boot process can deter you from doing the necessary update.
Laptops and other mobile devices should boot quickly. Granted, suspend and hybernate are good options but these systems do need to be rebooted on occasion and nothing sucks more than a 5 minute reboot when your battery is low and you are on an airplane. believe it or not, sometimes X crashes and the system cant shake the leftovers because of an nvidia driver quirk.
virtual machine environments where bringing up more computing resources in a hurry is necessary and a fast booting VM image is necessary.
and lastly, the drive to make things work faster is what keeps the gears of progress spinning. If we get content to have slow bootup then we will always have slow bootup.
Re:I run Debian, and I run FreeBSD. (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you ever fucked up your system and had to reboot for hours of trial and error to fix it? Yeah, me neither... oh wait that was yesterday when I upgraded my kernel!
I guess if you have to pee every 5 minutes then it's okay, but a disk check is not necessarily what I want to sit through when I can't sleep until my system is fixed.
Re:I run Debian, and I run FreeBSD. (Score:5, Insightful)
As an honest question (from someone who, not that it matters, runs both slackware at home and xp at work), what's with the obsession with boot time? Can anyone explain why the free software community is so obsessed with this metric? I understand that embedded devices are better when they boot immediately - nobody wants to have to wait to make toast - but to boot a computer?
Boot time is the only time the computer is on when you can't switch to a browser while waiting for it to do something you want done, but aren't interested in the process. You can do that with copying, torrenting, uncompressing, compiling, encrypting, etc, but not boot.
Also, because you shouldn't have to wait [lwn.net].
Don't most people just sleep or hibernate their computer these days anyway?
I dual boot Gentoo and Vista. And ditching either one is not an option.
Re:/usr/bin/pride, /usr/bin/ego, /etc (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand the "ego" criticism of calling the system GNU/Linux. No one's demanding that anyone call the system "Stalmanux" are they? It's about ethics/ideology, not about ego. The concern is that "Linux" as the name for the system encourages people to adopt the apathy the Linus and a lot of kernel developers share about issues concerning software freedom. If you care about software freedom and you think people should be able to do whatever they want with the software they use that is on *their* own machines, then call it GNU/Linux. If you opt for this pseudopragmatism instead, just call it whatever you want.
Ultimately, the name isn't the most important thing, is it?
Servers (Score:5, Insightful)
but that's what, once a month, once a year, once a decade if your server is in good health?
You seem to make the assumption that people keep their computers on 24x7.
I imagine *many* consumers want their computer to turn on instantly during a cold boot. That's obviously unrealistic for now. But even more certainly, *more* people would prefer it.
Now, I know you may not care much -- but if given the chance -- wouldn't you want faster boot times if possible? Why not? So if yes, why not try?
Re:I run Debian, and I run FreeBSD. (Score:3, Insightful)
IP KVM?
Re:I run Debian, and I run FreeBSD. (Score:2, Insightful)
In answer to your first question... no.
I've messed up my kernel/kernel config and had to boot as far as GRUB numerous times, but I've only had to boot through the entire daemon loading process twice in a row. After it gets that far, the kernel is generally stable and I just have to restart daemons to fix the rest.
Rebooting to fix userland issues should only be a Windows headache.
Re:I run Debian, and I run FreeBSD. (Score:2, Insightful)
So you don't care about how fast trains are because it's faster to fly.
But wait, if trains suddenly became ten faster, you'd consider taking the train, right? So you do care.