RE: FreeLinux (Debian/GNU BSD)
At 10:45 AM 7/9/99 -0700, Brent Fulgham wrote:
>We did discuss doing a Debian BSD distribution, but we had
>some question as to whether there would be much interest
>in doing so, or in using it.
I'd be interested in working on it, once I get back to college.
>We also weren't sure what kind
>of response we would receive from the BSD community, and
>whether we would be seen as an abomination. ;-)
>
>The short-term plan was to create a BSD kernel module that
>could be used on a regular Debian system, perhaps using
>the BSD Linux-compatibility code. Our distribution already
>spans two binary CD's for each ARCHITECTURE. So, we would
>have a tremendous amount of additional space needed to
>host a completely-native BSD distribution as well.
I don't know that a completely-native BSD distribution would be that much
larger, considering that we already have much of it in the tree - ash,
pmake, csh, etc. I would personally be more interested in a Debian BSD than
a Debian GNU/Linux with a BSD kernel. That would probably imply patches to
many progams to make them compile on BSD, though.
Also, remember that gcc & autoconf may need patchs to deal with this
unusual system, anyway we do it. EGCS only works without outside patches on
OpenBSD, I believe, and autoconf (& gcc, which uses it) may get confused by
the unique system.
>We did feel that FreeBSD would probably be the best distribution
>to base such a beast on. We would probably be distributing it as
>Debian GNU/BSD, or perhaps Debian GNU/FreeBSD...
I seem to remember some discussion on this, that consensus was not
complete. NetBSD has the advantage of being portable to many more systems.
Debian GNU/BSD vs. Debian GNU/FreeBSD would probably should be up to how
the underlying BSD version prefers, as it's their name. Probably Debian
GNU/BSD would be better if only the kernel is being used.
(I can't wait for the flame wars on Debian GNU/BSD to cover
gnu.misc.discuss, considering how someone got a repermand there for
insulting Debian developers by calling it Debian _GNU_/Linux.)
--
David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org (alternately dvdeug@hotmail.com)
"I would weep, but my tears have been stolen; I would shout, but my voice
has been taken. Thus, I write." - Tragic Poet
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