Debian Gets a Kernel Transplant Option

by Kristin Shoemaker - Apr. 07, 2009Comments (3)

While not a completely new concept, the Debian team introduced what it called a couple of new architectures over the weekend. Except the new architectures aren't really new, per se -- i386 and amd64 are already supported in Debian. They're already supported in the Debian Linux kernel. The new additions are FreeBSD kernels compiled for the aforementioned architectures.

ZDNet UK examines a few reasons why the Debian team decided to offer the UNIX-based cores alongside the traditional Linux kernel. The looming specter of legal issues no doubt played some part in the decision, but I can't help but think that a yet to materialize lawsuit was just a convenient excuse to devote some time to hacking about the FreeBSD kernel and Debian system.

Hopefully the lawsuit scenario will never come to pass, and what we will see will be more along the lines of uniquely UNIX goodies mixing with a very Debian environment. Will swapping out kernels make Debian useful to a wider audience? Certainly. Will the project suffer for it? Probably not. While it's not quite as simple as dropping a new kernel in the heart of an operating system, both the Linux and FreeBSD kernels are contributed to and supported by many different projects. Seeing as this is a little bit more extreme than a different chip architecture, it wouldn't be surprising to see a fork along the way. It might not divide the project, or adversely affect it, especially if the new kernel draws in new users and developers.

The FreeBSD kernels (called kfreebsd in their Debian forms) will be available in the unstable and experimental branches of the Debian project in the very near future.


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3 Comments
 

I wonder what UNIX features they would want, that are not already in the kernel. Also, this seems like a ton of extra work and distraction, when none is really required. If you want FreeBSD features, well, get FreeBSD!


0 Votes

You should read a bit more before you post things like this.

The work with have more than one architecture and kernel (OS) in Debian has been worked on for more than 6 years. The first alternative was Hurd, the GNU OS. It is integrated, and a bigger difference than switching to NetBSD or FreeBSD.

And compiling software on a 64 bit SPARC or PowerPC is a bigger task (which has already been done) than to switch to another kernel, but same CPU architecture.


Please have a look att http://www.debian.org/ports/ for more information.


0 Votes

@Jxn - not sure if you were addressing me? The post does address that this is not a new concept on the very first line ("While not a completely new concept"...).


I realize there are a ton of ports. The question is do we need to expend energy trying to integrate a new kernel into the mix?


0 Votes
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