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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."
i thought debian was a linux distro. if they make a distro for something other than linux, does that mean its done by the same people, with the same principle behind it, or something like that
or am i jsut really missing the point of what a distro is?
So, would someone care to explain why you wouldn't just use NetBSD instead of trying to run a Linux environment with a NetBSD kernel? What benefit does this give you? One of the benefits of BSDs is that they're coherent systems and not a hodgepodge of kernels and userland apps. So again, what is being gained here?
I had debian installed on my UltraAXI and it ran pretty good. NetBSD ran pretty good on it too. Not to get off topic, but UltraSparcs lack variety. Not many linux distros still support Ultra ports well (Redhat stopped at 6.2, MDK stopped at 7.1?, Debian is current!, Gentoo doesn't support X on Ultra (WTF, Idiots) Slack stopped at 6.x? and Splack just isn't bleeding edge). Back on topic, I'm glad to see progress. I'm not into OS flame wars, but I do like things about Debian (apt, dur), and NetBSD (mad portability), so I'm definately going to have to play with this. :-)
Can all fish swim?
Fire up Bochs on your new Debian kernel on your NetBSD OS on your SPARC system and run an i386 system on which you may choose to run ... oh, I don't know, maybe a copy of FreeBSD? Which itself could run Bochs---but in Linux emulation mode? And that could run MS-DOS?
Whatever you do, don't start a Java app at this point!
It would be great to be able to run *BSD on these machines, especially the older ones we have where hp-ux just doesn't hack it anymore.
Who the hell told Carrot Top he was funny?
However, then, it wouldn't be "Debian/NetBSD" but rather "Debian GNU/NetBSD" (Debian, at least, having already accepted the GNU/Linux moniker).
I really think there are practical advantages to distinguishing between 1) kernel, 2) "everything else", i.e. portable packages ported to run on that kernel, and with each other, and 3) who did the porting/distribution bundling.
Of course, when there is only one varient of one of those three components, i.e. the bits and pieces of what would be GNU, we tend to leave it out, as cumbersome, redundant, and unwieldly, RMS protests of the need to pay hommage (or at least use terminology that conveys GNU roots) notwithstanding. Thus, "Red Hat Linux": there is no other kind of "Linux" packaged by Red Hat (and since they did the bundling, they get to call it pretty much whatever they want (personally, I would have preferred "Up Yours, MS"/OS, but anyway...)), and no techical need for a "Red Hat GNU/Linux" designation.
RMS may want to see us embrace a phisosophical basis for free software, but, without the economic benefits that open source exemplifies, I doubt free software would have the contributions it does. Similarly, without a technical argument for "GNU/Linux", the moniker will likely not be popular. It would be nice, though, if the technical argument were there, so the philosophy and history could get some recognition and representation in common use.
I expect that might come in niche markets: where Linux is combined with severly scaled down portions of GNU, and non-GNU software, particularly in the embedded market: look at BusyBox -- a combination of utilities in a single executible for space reasons. We are seeing attempts to standardize "Linux" for the desktop (LSB), as well as for the embedded space. I, for one, wouldn't mind seeing LSB (Linux Standard Base) become GSB (GNU Standard Base), with LSB dealing solely with a kernel standard, in this vein.
O.K. ObGNU/Linux rant over.
You could've hired me.
Apt is the reason why I switched from RedHat to Debian. Well, apt and availability of programs. There seems to be much more, much faster availability for Debian than any other distro. Yes, yes I know there is a port of apt for RH but in my opinion it isn't that good. Anyways, I wish apt would become a standard. Its great to see other unices adopting it.
Granted, it's not Darwin, but you're still wrong.
You're spreading misconceptions as if they're fact and that shits me. Get it right.
How ironic.
No, I don't want a free iPod
the 'main' distribution is, when you add security.debian.org to your /etc/apt/sources.list, updated with backported security fixes and such. so you get the best of both worlds from an admin standpoint: stable software (as the OP said) known to work and work well, plus security updates. subscribing to the debian security list is also a nice, low traffic way to keep up on debian security things. the combination of these factors make debian a damned dream to run as a sysadmin if you have, say, a huge thundering herd of web and database servers to keep happy.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
First of all, I must state that Debian isn't the most newbie friendly distribution out there, although, some non-newbie friendly aspects, such as dselect is slated for replacement in the next release.
That being said, Debian is one of the easiest systems to configure, *if* you know what you are doing. (If you don't know what you are doing, all operating systems are hard to configure - some just guess better at what you want). The packaging support is excellent, and as the OP said, the installation scripts are rather refined for the most part.
However, the OP has one thing wrong about Debian - there are usually 3, (sometimes 4) branches out there. First branch is the stable branch, and its codenamed "woody" in this release. The second branch is the testing branch, codenamed "sarge". The third branch is unstable, and is forever known as "sid" (after the boy next door in Toy Story who liked to break toys). Packages/updates first appear in sid/unstable, then, after a short period of testing to make sure nothing breaks, they move to sarge/testing. Sarge/testing tries to keep its numbers of bugs low, so its always a good release candidate. Woody/stable has no new packages or updates, save for back-ported bug fixes. (The Debian project is rather good at getting quick bug fixes, btw). When the Debian project is close to a release, sarge will be frozen, a new testing branch will be made, and for a short period of time, there will be four branches in existance.
Several complaints are frequently heard about debian. One of the most common ones is that the stable distribution tends to have older packages, which is very, very true. The goal for the "official" Debian stable release isn't to have the newest collection of packages, but the most tested and stable collection of packages. Another complaint is the selection of packages out there, and the Debian package requirements. A vanilla Debian install, with no non-free sources, tends to be a rather good example of FOSS. Again, this has to do with the Debian philosophy (and it makes the maintainance of packages easier). Complaining that Debian doesn't have Cool-Binary-Nonfree-Package-XYZ is like complaining that iptables doesn't run on windows.
Other then the package management, the one area where Debian really, truly shines (IMHO), is the wide collection of ports out there, and that Debian (unlike many other distributions out there) does not treat non-x86 users as lower-class citizens. Woody runs on (IIRC) 11 different hardware architectures. That impresses me. I can go out, right now, find an old Alpha, Sparc, m68k or a new Itanium, and can run the latest Debian release on it, and for the most part, it will act like the same release on my x86 laptop. When the AMD64 CPUs are widely available, I'm expecting that Debian will quickly jump over to supporting that architecture.
Oh, and Debian tends to have a wonderful user community. :)
You'll find quite a bit of GNU software on a default FreeBSD install
Yes, but not so much in a NetBSD install. To take your example of tar(1) for instance, that's now handled by NetBSD's pax(1). The way things are going, the toolchain will be the only GNU software on Net eventually.
Chris