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Re: Re: Debian BSD.. cool idea



Getting back on topic here =)

I recall waay back on Jan 31 when Raul Miller wrote:

> The context is how to produce a debian/bsd system. Someone suggested
> that the changes between different BSD releases would diminish both
> Debian and BSD to the point where neither would be served. I suggested
> using the linux compatability library to base the distribution on would
> be sufficient to address this problem.

I don't think this would address the issue properly either. For one thing,
there are some pieces to the system that simply have to be FreeBSD
binaries, like the kld* utils. Also, things like 'jail' don't even exist
in Linux (wow jail is cool! =). Things like 'ps' and 'top' use
BSD-specific methods since the POSIX committee in all their wisdom decided
against specifying a way to introspect the system. So you'd need these
too. That brings back the kernel dependencies. And unfortunately, basic
system programs like init and killall tend to need to look at the process
listing one way or another, among other kernely things.

I don't really think you can get away from it that way. There is one thing
in Dan's essay I agree with totally, and that's that a smart way to deal
with the issues might be to do work on FreeBSD to reduce kernel
dependencies. This ought to allow you to have seperately packaged versions
of ps and such, and recommend upgrading when a new kernel is installed.
The truly user-land base system (like ls, cp, etc) could then be replaced
with GNU things as you like, and the system is plain old Debian from there
up.

-- 
I am a computer. I am dumber than any human and smarter than any administrator.


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