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Re: Debian 6.0 , not named as GNU/Linux ?



On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 11:54:42PM -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> On 8/12/2012 8:46 PM, Richard Hector wrote:
> 
> > Well, a Debian system doesn't have to use Linux any more.
> 
> On 8/12/2012 9:02 PM, John Hasler wrote:
> > There are now Hurd and FreeBSD ports, so Linux is not the only kernel.
> 
> No, a Debian install doesn't require the Linux kernel.  But it does if
> you want a system that actually works.  Debian users won't really have
> their choice of kernel until they can drop a Debian GNU/KFreeBSD and/or
> Debian GNU/Hurd install DVD into any desktop/laptop/server they buy and
> have it work as smoothly as Debian GNU/Linux currently does.  They don't
> have the hardware support now, and likely never will.  Why?
> 
> Compare the patch submission rate to Linux against KFreeBSD and Hurd.  A
> lot of that is new hardware support.  Because of this, and many others
> reasons, I think it's clear that these alternate kernels will forever be
> experimental.

kFreeBSD is certainly much more viable than Hurd.  It's at least taken
from a viable OS in its own right, and while it doesn't have the same
level of hardware support, it's mainly used for servers and works fine
in this situation.  If you wanted a Debian server with ZFS and pf etc.,
then kFreeBSD would make a fine choice here.  Possibly as a desktop as
well, though I wouldn't expect great 3D acceleration or anything.

Hurd on the other hand hasn't been remotely usable at any point in its
existence (and I've been trying it periodically for at least a decade).
While hardware support is of course a major issue here--it's absolutely
awful--the main problem historically is that there has been no pressure
or incentive for its maintainers to focus on making it generally
usable.  It was a playground for exploring interesting stuff like
filesystem translators, but didn't focus on solving any real world
needs.  Which is a great pity, since some of the ideas are good, but I
don't expect it to ever become viable until it can run on "modern"
hardware.  Linux OTOH, was initially worked on by those frustrated by
Minux not having the capabilities needed for real-world use, which
quickly made it into a usable system.  Hurd is still at the "Minix"
stage, and will likely never leave it unless they do something radical,
like being able to use *all* the Linux drivers (rather than just
networking).  It's still limited to 2GiB partitions AFAIK!  On Linux,
my swap space alone is 8 times this size.


Regards,
Roger

-- 
  .''`.  Roger Leigh
 : :' :  Debian GNU/Linux    http://people.debian.org/~rleigh/
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