Slashdot Mirror
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."
...for when I argue against "Debian sucks because it's Linux" *BSD people. Debian is a "universal" operating system (well, let's say "packaging system") -- it's is not strictly Linux. Debian != Linux
On this topic, I remember reading a while back about a Debian FreeBSD project. Anyone know the status of that?
Join Tor today!
Hmm. Unless they are planning to call this Debian GNU/NetBSD they had damn well better remove the wretched GNU/ from GNU/Linux. If Linux plus the GNU compiler chain justifies claiming ownership of Linus's work then their 'logic' also requires them to attempt to claim BSD once Debian is running on it.
Democrat delenda est
Or maybe FreeBSD port based (oh wait Gentoo)...
One of Linux' big problems is a lack of modularity. Building an entire Linux system, from scratch, is an incredible pain; you have to buy books to explain how. This is particularly annoying when, say, you're building a Linux appliance and want to tweak things. You want to compile with -m686? On BSD you just change one setting, run one makefile and everything rebuilds. On Linux you have to configure a zillion packages independantly.
OTOH, one of BSD's big problems is hardware. I have a Hauppauge Nova-T DVB card. Is it supported under BSD? Need you ask? (Although, surprisingly, BT8x8-based TV cards are supported by OpenBSD.) I have a long-term project to build a PVR. If I could use BSD, I'd go for it like a shot --- it's just so much easier to configure. As it is, I have to go for Linux, which is so much of a pain that I haven't been able to muster the energy to get started yet...
Come to think of it, on many levels GNU/FSF has led the charge. Look at how many GPL'ed programs already run on several OS'es. I mean, all that really matters is that nethack works on your os of choice, right?
I wonder how long before we see RedHat XVII for windows..
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
...but UltraSparcs lack variety. Not many linux distros still support Ultra ports well...
That's due to lack of demand, the general public can't afford new Sun hardware (except for the crappy SunBlade workstations and the sub $1000 servers, which are basically PC's anyway) and the enterprise needs proper support. A port of RedHat9 would be almost unusable on older SPARC boxes - it's slow enough on my 1GHz Athlon.
Would you run Linux on a brand new Apple PowerBook, or would you stick to MacOSX? - a nice looking, modern OS which is tuned for the hardware platform, supports all of it's features, comes with a bunch of decent apps and is well supported by the vendor. Ditto Solaris on Sun hardware. Once you get to know it Solaris is a beautifully elegant and technically excellent OS. Even more so on the mid-range and high-end boxes, where it's maturity and scalability really shine.
Linux is maturing into a modern, fully featured UNIX which rivals Solaris in bloat. Lack of bloat was one of it's earlier strengths on low-end SPARC desktop hardware, there seems little point in using it these days, especially since there are so few SPARC/Linux applications.
# init 5
Connection closed.
Oh...
Maybe this will make people stop and think about what "linux" actually is, and where else credit might be due. If you switch out that component, what do you have?
Of course the marketing machine likes the word linux quite a lot, it's catchy, it has panache, it sells, which is why people say things like "wow, how did you get that linux software running on MacOS?" when refering to things like bash, gcc or gnome apps.
Everyone always complains and bitches about what OS is better, whos has the l33ter OS, who is running the most current kernel, and then proceed to get in bitter flame wars over which OS is better.
This guy has created a product to satisfy one thing for him, which is his curiousity. Isn't that good enough these days? A project based on curiousity should be respected on general the general premise that something creative is being done in the name of innovation.
Maybe if we stopped wasting time arguing and insulting each other about what OS we run, and spend all that time doing something productive like this man has done, we will actually accomplish every goal we set.
Just a thought.
-kalle
Well, it's Debian GNU/Hurd when Hurd is the kernel, so I see no reason why Debian GNU/NetBSD is not acceptable when the NetBSD kernel is used.
There's no 'claiming ownership' of anyone's work involved in this naming convention. The slash is a separator between 'majority OS stakeholder' and 'kernel'.
Even if you don't agree that GNU is a 'majority OS stakeholder' in terms of lines of code, I would argue that they are 'majority OS stakeholder' in that they defined and promoted a philosophy on top of which a community of developers, a body of software and a community of users has been built.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
They're not running Linux on top of NetBSD (that would be Linux emulation, and BTW, it's already done by NetBSD people). They're porting Debian (the operating system, not Linux wich is a kernel) to the NetBSD kernel. The benefits? 8000+ packages.
Prescriptive grammar:linguistics