A coworker of mine (Debian bigot) just showed me this strange project coming from Debian[1].
Essentially it is a Debian distro using the FreeBSD kernel instead of Linux. This confused the heck out of me. I thought that was the silliest thing to do. I mean what's next? A Hurd kernel, BSD userland, Gnu C library, with a Debian package set??? This goes way beyond the "because I can" reasoning. After a bit of digging, I found the wiki[2], and also the page that explains why[3]. Apparently, They like the FreeBSD kernel better technically. That and the SCO thing scares them. :) IMHO, this project is mostly silly, but could demonstrate itself to be of ultimate importance in the future. This could prove the possibility of swapping out the Linux kernel with other options. It would also show the greater importance of GNU's achievements to those that forget that Linux is just a kernel, and the rest of the OS (GNU) is relatively more important. GNU/Linux as RMS would insist on. The FreeBSD fan in me is excited they chose the FreeBSD kernel. The FSF/GNU supporter in me is happy about work on the possibility of kernel swapping, and reduction of non-free binary drivers[4,5,6]. The skeptic in me thinks it is a waste of time, and is just weird. The *BSD bigot in me doesn't understand why you wouldn't just go with *BSD completely. :) /me lays down the kindling Anyone else have any opinions? /me waits for the bonfire 1. http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/ 2. http://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD 3. http://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD_why 4. http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2006/04/27/openbsd-3_9.html 5. http://os.newsforge.com/os/06/03/20/2050223.shtml 6. http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#39 --lonnie
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