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Meet UbuntuBSD, UNIX For Human Beings
prisoninmate writes: What's ubuntuBSD? Well, it's not that hard to figure out yourself, but just in case you're not sure, we can tell you that ubuntuBSD promises to bring the power of the FreeBSD kernel to Ubuntu Linux. The best part of using the FreeBSD kernel is that you'll end up using the famous Z File System, or ZFS. Xfce is also included along with the popular Firefox, LibreOffice, and Ubuntu Software Center apps. ubuntuBSD is inspired by the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD project, it is hosted on SourceForge, and has been created by Jon Boden.
"[...] bring the power of the FreeBSD kernel to Ubuntu Linux."
WTF?
Why would anyone want this?
FreeBSD is hardly a perfect system. But why would I want to cripple it further by making it look like Ubuntu?
There's nothing wrong with Sourceforge. That's a 2015-era complaint, get modern!
The "weirdness" of the *nix userland that most people in the *nix world have standardized on these days. Yeah, can't think why they'd possibly want that.
Regular FreeBSD is indeed just fine, but it has dozens of minor incompatibilities with both GNU and SysV that will trip you up if you're used to those others.
GNU/kFreeBSD is a really nice compromise if you're used to either GNU/Linux or SysV. GNU is designed to be as compatible as possible with both BSD and SysV. (So it's also a nice option if you're a BSD guy forced to work on a SysV system. Which is actually how I got started with it.)
If you're a BSD guy using BSD, then yeah, there's little point in putting GNU on it. But for everyone else, it makes a lot of sense.
Frankly, I try to stick GNU on everything. I've run it on BSD, HPUX, Solaris, SunOS, Windows, and, of course, Linux.
Right now, I'm running GNU/kFreeBSD in a vm to port some software to BSD. When I get it running, on that, I'll install regular BSD to make sure everything still works, but I'm interested in the porting effort, not in mucking around learning all of BSD's quirks, so GNU/kFreeBSD is a godsend. I'm not scared of the command line. I just don't want to waste my time remembering all the little incompatibilities of the BSD userland while I'm trying to get some work done. In recent years, every single time I've tried to use straight BSD, I end up getting frustrated at some little thing that just won't work the way I want it to. The way I'm used to.
Now, for someone who's new to *nix, I agree that BSD is a very fine option. Heck, I started with the BSD-based version of SunOS, and still have fond memories of it. But at this point in time, I am so used to the GNU userland that I just don't want to deal with something that doesn't have it. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who prefers GNU—after all, not only has the Debian GNU/BSD survived for many years, but now there's a second one! :)
To avoid systemd, I suspect. Since systemd only works with the Linux kernel, and so far has produced a great deal of difficulty in return for its very aggressive re-engineering of the entire Linux back end infrastructure, it seems very very reasonable to try simply replacing the kernel to get a clean divorce from the systemd infrastructure.
Are you fucking serious? You're suggesting he basically maintain his own spin of the kernel because some idiots without any sense of how people actually want to use computers don't think the patch is useful enough to integrate upstream? Fuck me, people here really do live in their own bubble.