Debian NetBSD for Sparc

Dan writes "Matthew Garrett has demonstrated his success in building a Debian operating system on the Sparc architecture on top of the NetBSD kernel. Additionally Joel Baker reported about significant work for the NetBSD/x86 port, such as dpkg and APT, that will work without additional patches. NetBSD runs on hardware unsupported by Linux. Folks working on the project say that porting Debian to the NetBSD kernel increases the number of platforms that can run a Debian-based operating system."

Comments

Re:what makes it debian?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the Debian homepage you will see that Debian is striving to provide a platform-agnostic, kernel-agnostic operation system environment.

As well as Debian GNU/Linux there is already Debian GNU/Hurd.

Debian/NetBSD is an effort to provide the NetBSD kernel with the Debian software utilities. I for one can't wait.

You're not missing the point of what a distro is, this is something the Debian folk want to do.

Re:why?

[jvervloet]

What benefit does this give you?

They explain it on there web site

Stability

[rf0]

Debian is all about stability. The main branch, Woody, had old packages but they are know to work. You don't get a lot of crashes, things just work. You will find debian people put a lot of work into configs and such like, make sure things interact with each other.

For example say I install a new Apache Modules there are scripts that will automatically update my httpd.conf rather than just writing over it. To get a Debian system up and running is quick and easy as 99% of the tweaking has been done.

Even though things are old they do make sure they are secure. If there is an exploit you can upgrade your system by just doing

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade.

Thats it. Auto download and patch of affected programs

However there is also another unstable branch, Sarge IIRC, which has cutting edge stuff. Latest version of everything. However as implied by its name it could just get up and crash at any moment.

Hope that helps

Rus

Re:Stability

[blonde rser]

However as implied by its name it could just get up and crash at any moment.

This is a common misinterpretatioin of the branches in debian. When the 'sid' branch is refered to as 'unstable' it is referring to how stable the package is, not how stable systems that install the branch are. Namely a branch is stable/unstable depending on how often the packages change: in Woody you don't have to worry about things changing and upgrading very often. This is an advantage to a great amount of people. But a systems stability is measured by a variety of things: how often programs seg fault, uptime, performance bugs, etc. I would say more often than not the testing/unstable branches of debian make for more stable systems. For desktop one need only look at the XFree86 version offered in each branch to see this.

Yes I am aware that instability of code does have an effect on instability of a system due to less opportunity for testing and etc. But in general people greatly over value this effect. I think people do this for two reasons. The logic is easy to understand and people like to believe what they can understand. And the name leads people to a first conclusion and people like to stay with their first conclusion.

Re:Stability

[zdzichu]

Debian is all about stability. The main branch, Woody, had old packages but they are know to work.

I never undestood this old==good semantic. FreeBSD is mature, modern, stable as rock and has recent version of most packages.

You don't get a lot of crashes, things just work.

You don't get crashes at all with FreeBSD.

Re:why?

[lederhosen]

It has nothing to do with linux, it is the GNU environment...

Debian GNU/linux -- GNU on Linux
Debian GNU/Hurd -- GNU on The Hurd
Debian GNU/NetBSD -- GNU on NetBSD kernel
NetBSD -- NetBSD userland on NetBSD
kernel

Re:How about BSD on Linux?

[MartinG]

I think you might be looking for this

Re:Debian/Non-License Centric Linux

[lederhosen]

>Since when has Debian been ok with BSD licenses?
Like FSF, Allways, BSD is as free as you can get it.

Re:why?

[GrimReality]

jvervloet provided a link to the Debian page that answers your question. The following is the relevant part. Just in case (I miss stuff a lot).

Not everybody likes the *BSD ports tree or the *BSD userland (this is a personal preference thing, rather than any sort of comment on quality). Linux distributions have been produced which provide *BSD style ports or a *BSD style userland for those who like the BSD user environment but also wish to use the Linux kernel - Debian GNU/NetBSD is the logical reverse of this, allowing people who like the GNU userland or a Linux-style packaging system to use the NetBSD kernel.

In other words, I suppose it means: some people like 'linux userland' but not the 'linux kernel'.

Thank you.
GrimReality
2003-04-29 15:50:03 UTC (2003-04-29 11:50:03-EDT)