Debian NetBSD

bXTr writes "Interesting project over at SourceForge. Quoting from the website, 'Debian NetBSD is a port of the Debian Operating System to the NetBSD kernel. It is currently in an early stage of development and cannot currently be installed from scratch. Instead, a tarball of the current envionment is available and can be extracted into a handy directory on a NetBSD system.' Check out the reasons why they're doing it and some interesting commentary at DailyDaemonNews on this."

kaboom

Two open source minorities combine in a brilliant flash of light Because we can. .

Eh... why not?

I don't see why not, we have lindows, and now deb-bsd, so it shouldn't be bad.

debian netbsd port

I thought NetBSD's motto was to port to anything and everything with a CPU (viz. NetBSD Dreamcast), not to get another operating system ported to it ;)

Disclaimer: Yes, yes, I know what they did and it's not porting an OS. I just found it sort of funny, in a 'tables-have-been-turned' sort of way.

I would prefer the other way around

personally, I would like to see a BSD distro with ports and all, but with a linux kernel.

I just installed FreeBSD recently and have to say i was blown away with how professional the installer was, very simple and powerful - not to mention the ports system.
debian is nice, apt-get is a great program and the net install is awesome, but I can't say I have much love for dselect. I think debian shows the most promise of any linux distro right now, but in terms of polish, I have to give it to FreeBSD so far.

Gentoo linux

Gentoo Linux has that, www.gentoo.org , it uses a ports style system, i'm not sure if it's a direct port of ports, or their own deal.

Re:Gentoo linux

Ports is a collection of applications that can easily be compiled for your operating system. Basically for FreeBSD you have /usr/ports. That directory contains various subdirectories dividing applications into www (apache, mod_php4, etc), lang (ruby, etc), mail (mutt, exim, etc), and so forth. Each directory for a specific application contains a number of files. Some of these are patch files that are applied to the source code of the port. See the ports tree doesn't contain the actual code of the application - it only contains enough logic to get the regular .tar.gz release (usually from the developers home site) and the patches to build it properly (particular distribution preferences on file structure, libraries, etc).

Every couple days I use cvsup to suck down the modifications to the ports tree to my FreeBSD box. Then I happen to use a relatively new tool not in the base system (portupgrade, written in ruby) to check if my currently installed packages are up to date. If they aren't, I can instruct portupgrade to upgrade them or go to each directory individually and do a "make install". Oh yeah, each directory has a Makefile :).

It's sort of like why distribute the source code if it is just going to get out of date (plus you'll be getting the source for all kinds of crap you never end up using). Of course now each application must be compiled but if you don't want to do that you can use the packages (precompiled binaries that can be added with pkg_add, etc).

Another benefit is ports can be on any version of the operating system because it is independent of the base system. Look at RedHat and you'll see compiled packages for RedHat 6.2, 7.2, etc (of course, before someone knee jerks a reply, RPMS are out there but I'm trying to make a point here). Ports avoids this. The price is compilation. A trade off. You make the call.

Hope that helps. Here is the FreeBSD handbook section for ports: ports-using.html [freebsd.org] (it contains a better description of what files are in a ports directory).

ports

What exactly is the ports system?

More like, what are rpm users missing out on? With rpm -i package.rpm the user may or may not be able to install the intended software. There could be real dependency problems, as in kde2 needs qt2. There could also be bogus dependency problems since you may have compiled qt2 from source but rpm wouldn't know about it.

Enter FreeBSD and ports. A typical FreeBSD install creates a directory called /usr/ports which is a whole tree of makefiles. So to install something, you just cd /usr/ports/category/WhateverYouWantToInstall/ && make && make install. All dependencies are taken care of automagically. The makefiles in these directories are smart enough to download whatever you need and then compile the source on your machine. So installing a new package doesn't take several hours of trolling newsgroups and searching for rpms.

But you don't have to take my word for it. Check this [freebsd.org] out.

My experience is limited to Mandrake, Slackware, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. They each have their strengths and weaknesses, but when I need to get sh*t done, BSD, espescially FreeBSD is my first choice just because the ports tree contains nearly any software I'd want to run, eliminating the bottleneck that software installation sometimes turns into and letting me get to the task at hand.

As an aside, it seems like everything that Mandrake tries to be to "joe sixpack" who is just getting into trying linux on the desktop, BSD is to the sysadmin or programmer who needs to get a *nix platform up and running for a certain task. Compiling a custom kernel, installing software, modifying the init process, etc are at least as easy for the sysadmin on BSD as adjusting the screen fonts and changing the wallpaper are for a newbie in Mandrake.

Re:ports

> How is this any more convenient than apt-get which is also available for RPM based systems?

Because ports does not require packages. Example, if I want to install a KDE app, it does not require that I have the qt package installed. It searches for libqt.so. If it's a gtk package, it runs gtk-config, if it's apache, it runs apxs, and so forth. Now debian's a little better than RPM, which ends up making you force-install just about everything (defeating dependency checking) because you installed something from source, but you still have to intervene when a dependent package isn't present. Ports assumes you know what you're doing, and if the lib is there, it's there, it doesn't need a package manifest to tell you. It does check for the package first, and ports does build a package, so you get a package-based system that degrades gracefully when you don't religiously use the package system.

THAT is why I use ports. Because no sysadmin I know of takes the builds out of the box, they keep their source trees around to tweak and recompile as needed. Oh, and ports lets me do that doo, I just "make get" the port, cd work/packagename, and there's the source tree as if I'd untarred it myself. I can configure && make install it from there, or cd ../..; make install from there and it builds as a package.

Try these

Slackware, the daddy of em all - still alive and kicking. Very BSDish install, similar package handling, BSD init. No ports system last I checked :( but a very friendly system otherwise for compiling from source. http://www.slackware.com

Gentoo, a newcomer, to oversimplify a little the idea seems to be Slack+Ports. Haven't used it yet, heard some great things, sure looks promising. http://www.gentoo.org

Also another similar project that was just recently reported here - sorcerer linux. Don't know enough about it to differentiate it from gentoo, the ideas seem very similar unless I'm missing something (quite possible, haven't had the time to try either.) http://sorcerer.wox.org/

Re:the kernel? my god man

Why on earth why would you want a linux kernel in BSD userland? Do you really want a horribly broken VM system and every yahoo who can type hello world submitting patches? Thats why I like BSD. Theres a core group in charge of what goes and what stays. Who has the final say so in the linux kernel?

Ever heard of Linus Torvalds? Oh, and for the v2.4 kernel it's Marcelo Tosatti, for v2.2 it's Alan Cox. For v2.0, it's yours truly. It's hardly like anyone can get their code into the kernel. Anyone is free to submit patches though. That doesn't mean it'll get in.

As for the VM, yes, there have been problems (mostly with corner-cases, though), but v2.0.xx has a stable VM, v2.2.xx has a stable VM now, v2.4.xx has a stable, if somewhat unoptimal VM now, and v2.6 will hopefully have Rik van Riel's VM, which shares a lot of similarities with the VM from FreeBSD, but with some Linux-specific adaptments.

So please, don't spread FUD.

Well...

At least Enron isn't the only group of people jumping off of sinking ships! About time Debian started moving to an operating system that doesn't have VM problems every other release. Go ahead! Mod this one down!

Cooperation

To me, this is promising. I like to see cooperation between the Linux world and the *BSD world. Both have their advantages, and it'd be great if both would learn from each other more often. Perhaps this is an instance where some exchange of ideas could come about? Those responsible deserve a pat on the back.

Debian is not Linux

To me, this is promising. I like to see cooperation between the Linux world and the *BSD world.

Well I agree with you that it's promising, but do remember that the Debian project is not Linux, but a GNU operating system. There is Debian GNU Linux, and there is Debian GNU HURD, and now (apparently) Debian GNU BSD.

Re:They're not cooperating...

Their motivation is quite clear to me: have another choice of a kernel that is already robust and better than the Linux kernel in certain areas, and have the nice, organized and easily upgradable Debian on top of it. Come on, building *everything* from source is so much more trouble than apt-get dist-upgrade. Think XFree86, Mozilla, etc.

Since 1999

If you check out the mailing list archives [debian.org], you can see the project has been ongoing (or at least discussed) since May 1999. It just until now to get it to the point where it actually sort of works.

So how long...

So how long before they declare that we have to start calling it GNU/NetBSD?

hmm

How's that for your hardcore, commie conspiracy?

Mac OS X will unify the *BSDs

Really, the convergence of Debian package management, GNU utils and NetBSD kernel isn't all that special and WILL NOT create a stronger, unified, easy-to-use UNIX variant.

Please, try Mac OS X; there's every advantage to it without all the traditional UNIX disadvantages.

• Simplified installation - OS X installs easily
  
• Easy-to-use interface - A yummy GUI interface that a first-time user can grok, with an excellent command shell for advanced users.
  
• Powerful inexpensive yummy hardware - G4 PowerMacs trump x86 by a long margin and cost much less than underperforming but expensive SPARC, MIPS and the PeeCee user's Holy Grail of DEC Alpha, which was intended to run WinBlows from the beginning and is dying anyways.
  
• Best design - look at the new iMac! Complete Apple Goodness from the small footprint to the sharp LCD display, all surrounding a powerful G4 processor.
  
• Open Source, even though GNU zealots will not agree. Fellow BSD'ers will soon recognize the errors of their ways and join ranks with the Apple crowd.
  
• Mac's ain't PeeCee's ;-)
  

My hope is that OS X will unify the BSDs into its proper place - at the top of the OS food chain. Many Free/Open/NetBSD users are coming to that conclusion as are many Linux users, beset with flaky kernels and horrible OS packaging.

Apple OS X and the *BSDs will be our answer to WinTel/Linux obsolescence.

There is a huge need for something like this

Right now if you need any sort of third-party application support (Oracle, etc.) or kernel threads (Java Hotspot, etc.) you need to run a Linux kernel.

If you don't need third party application support or kernel threads, however, FreeBSD has a much more solid, reliable kernel.

It would be excellent if you could maintain different machines with different kernels as needed, but have everything on top of that be Debian (both because Debian is excellent, and because supporting a heterogenous OS environment is a pain best avoided if possible).

Debian is an OS?

*blink*

I thought Debian was a distribution? That is, it's a kernel and assorted utilities. If we want to get right down to it, I always thought the kernel itself was the OS...

What makes a distribution is its installer and software management. That is, the main difference between SuSE and Debian and Red Hat is yast, apt, and rpm. So... They're porting apt to NetBSD? That's well and good, but is both unnecessary and not worth this fanfare.

I shoulda seen this one coming...

Finally, it's the GNU/BSD distribution!

Re:I shoulda seen this one coming...

Finally, it's the GNU/BSD distribution!

Gnu's not Unix...except when it is.

I don't like it

The thing I've always really liked about the BSDs is that they're complete and separate systems that include everything from the kernel to the userland tools, all integrated by one team. Compare with the Linux world, where you have a bunch of different distros that many people pretend are all the same OS (in spite of the fact that file systems are arranged differently, boot sequences are different, configuration is different, package management is different, userland tools are often different, etc.) because they happen to use the same kernel. The BSD way has always seemed a lot cleaner to me. The idea of seeing a myriad of distros based on the BSD kernels really isn't one that I like. I believe it's a step in exactly the wrong direction. Open source Unix needs more standardization, not more fragmentation.

I support it as a server over debian linux

Linux has some serious issues [slashdot.org]. I like the Freebsd development model better then linux thanks to all the issues with the 2.4 patches. My problem with FreeBSD is that its cripppled after the install is done. Hardly anything is configured. I feel like a kid stuck on a pogo stick when trying to do anything. For example under WindowMaker you need to put every item one by one to the x menu. No config menu's here. Also not even bash or frankly any shells besides the crippled bsh is installed by default. You need to edit all the files yourself assuming your unix literate. All just to learn it. That is crazy. Why? What a pain. Its not FreeBSD per say but unix in general that suffers from this. Linux breaks the mold. Unless you have 5 years expereince or a cs degree you can not really tune it or highly configure it. In Windows you can just point and click and all the items are in the start menu by default. There is an old saying. IF computers were airplaines the unix one would be the best. However you would need to assembly it yourself. I believe Linux took off because the distro's configure everything for you. Don't get me wrong when I say that BSD is a great server OS. I just hope debian *bsd will fix this which actually knowcked unix almost out of the workstation market. I have never used debian linux so I don't know how much is configured by default during installation. I just assume its better then the current netbsd.

Interesting Linux Mentality

For the longest time, people would argue about how Linux isn't an operating system, just a kernel from which an operating system is made. Now people are going out there and taking a complete operating system, pulling a part out of it, and sticking it in the middle of what was normally a Linux distribution.

Linux is a Kernel without an operating system. NetBSD is a complete operating system where everything is designed to work together seamlessly.

What's next, DebiaNT?

how different (from standard netbsd) is it?

Did they just port apt and dpkg, and put up some Debian-packaged NetBSD binaries? Or have they moved to a Sys V init system, ported the Debian administration and configuration tools, and all the other stuff that makes debian distinctive? They explicitly say that NetBSD doesn't support runlevels, and looking at the package list, it doesn't look like much of the debian tools have made it yet.

If its just a different package system, its pointless. Less work, and more immediately useful results, would be modifying apt to work with the current binary package system (which actually does support dependencies, etc.), and the large number of binaries in this format already available.

If not, its a more questionable proposition. Arguably, its not really BSD anymore...it runs NetBSD binaries and uses that kernel, but the userland is basically Debian, ie, just like any Linux distribution. And most people who want that should just assume use Debian with the Linux kernel, which is a far more mature combination. Yes, for VAXen, toasters, slide rules and other more arcane platforms this won't exactly work, but Debian-NetBSD doesn't seem to have package for these platforms anyway.

Do you care about your kernel?

I started using linux because it had the hardware support I needed, and support was 100x better. But it wasnt stable enough for my server, so I ran freebsd. But that was a few years ago. Ive always been able to explain to my friends who run BSD, that I need SMP support, so I run linux. But its also how linux has better configuration utilties and drivers. After using linux for years, I know where everything is, easy to setup and fix.

Now, Linux is rock solid, and I get to laugh at my friends who cant X setup on thier freebsd boxes. But then, by the time a good bsd distro will be out, newer and better linux kernels will be out, with new vm's and more features.

-
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...' - Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)

Transition

Not too long ago, someone made the comment on slashdot about the general progression of Linux users. As a users becomes more experienced with Linux, they tend to shift from:

Mandrake/RedHat -> Debian/Slackware -> *BSD

It seems that Debian is going to make that last transition a little easier.

Re:Transition

Funny but I've switched my desktop OS in slightly different order:

RedHat -> Slackware -> FreeBSD -> Debian

For desktop OS I find Debian Linux more convient than FreeBSD for two reasons:

• Linux have better support for multimedia devices than FreeBSD
• Debian have more prepackaged software than FreeBSD and in general quality of debian packages is better than FreeBSD ports thanks for Debian strict packaging policy.

quiet you!

no linux! please leave bsd alone. we were doing just fine thank you, go make another revolution somewhere else. we dont want microsoft targeting us next. we are much happier having them use our code instead.

*BSD More Secure?

I've heard a lot of talk at the local ISP (who gave up Linux for FreeBSD) that *BSD is some how more secure (which IMHO is relative). Why would an ISP think such a thing? And, if infact it is somehow more secure, then isn't having the wonderful tools of Debian running on it very very good? Regardless, I think it's really neat to see Debian growing in all kinds of interesting directions.

Splintering

At this rate there will be three independant open source platforms; Linux, *BSD and Debian. I see no real problem with this but I just don't understand the point. One other question; if Debian is the most pure Linux in an open source point of view why are they porting it to a more restrictive licensing scheme?

Original idea was Debian OpenBSD

The original proposal was for Debian OpenBSD:

Debian OpenBSD topic [abul.org]

Debian OpenBSD txt [abul.org]

So wait...let me get this straight...

NetBSD runs on everything, right? Hardware-wise at least.

Now Debian runs on everything? Kernel-wise at least, and with NetBSD, hardware-wise too? Freaky stuff...

What came first, the GNU kernel or linux?

I'm a bit confused here. Didn't the GNU community (what is pretty much what debian is) show it's openness to other kernels when it accepted the linux kernel while continuing on with the original GNU Hurd system? Even knowing it would slow down the progress of the Hurd?

I'm confused because the listy of reasons seem to suggest that it was in accepting the Hurd that states Debian is open to other kernels.

And even the Hurd is open to different micro-kernels! Mach and L4 are current micro kernel use efforts.

What next?

Does this mean that the "BSD is dyeing" guy is going to finally update his message to include Linux?

my thoughts on a distribution

I once thought of making a Linux distro -- yeah, everyone has -- but short story shorter, I don't have that itch to scratch anymore, since I have sitting in front of me a box that's running just Win2k. I got cygwin, liked it for a while, and have grown to hate it. Slow, buggy, and now unreliable in config -- make stopped working, some weird interaction with shell quoting. Make is kinda important yunno. The DLL that every last damn cygwin program needs is also GPL'd, which ironically might violate the LGPL for a lot of binutils. Discouraging commercial apps from using cygwin might be A Good Thing anyway, since it's not a paragon of security (it uses a shm segment to keep state like fd's). So I'm switching to MinGW, which is much nicer in many ways, but it has an even worse system of distribution than cygwin's rather unimpressive kludgy installer (which for starters is impossible to use without a mouse)

So I am wondering, what about porting something like BSD ports or Gentoo's portage or Debian's apt to MinGW? They're all ostensibly architecture-neutral, right? Personally I am leaning toward ports, because it uses the right language for dependency checking (make), it doesn't require packages (great for embryonic distros that don't have everything in packages). Portage OTOH looks like it has transactional features ports does not. I don't want to get mired in trying to design The Package System To End All Package Systems ... I would like to know if anyone else is working on such a thing for cygwin and/or mingw though.

Noooooooo! Stay away!

I am not a NetBSD user, but I love FreeBSD like Madonna loves dick. Debian's pkgs are interminably behind the curve relative to the rest of Linux-land and this would only serve to slow down NetBSD's acceptance. As far as BSDs go, NetBSD aims for hardware-indpedence/multiple platform acceptance. It is already behind the curve as far as pkgs go. The Debian "keep it stable at the cost of progress" mentality might hurt NetBSD. Please keep these people away. They might come after FreeBSD and really dick up things. Luckily, OpenBSD has Theo -- who is just plain mean as shit -- to protect the very important security work that is done over there. I don't see Hubbard as such a crusader to stop the "everything-that-is-bad-about-linux" crowd from poking their heads in.

So does this mean

that I can use apt-get on my toaster?

Re:That is why Microsoft gets all the customer bas

Some people truly don't understand the possibilities of things like porting. Or they have no idea what porting is. Porting, in case that is the case, is making software useable to many people on different operating systems and hardware configurations. Say you want to run a program, and you're running Solaris on a SPARC. But the person who originally wrote the program wrote it for Linux, on x86. Its useful, but not to you, since you don't have what it takes to use it. Now someone comes along and ports it to Solaris/SPARC. You can now use that program. Whee!

That is why Microsoft loses a customer base. Flexability.

Its also what's great about various *NIX distros. If there's something you don't like about, say Suse (just as an example, I liked Suse) - but like some other things about it. Now someone else comes along with a Suse-based distro, or just another distro altogether, which has more of what you want. Switch. Simple as that. Use whatever you want, however you want. But if you make changes, especially really cool ones, let other people use them, too. That's just being nice.

Flexability.

how is it GNU-based if it has a _BSD_ kernel?

is it just me or is it terribly pretentious to take the work of the NetBSD team, shove some debian/gnu stuff on top of it and call it a GNU-based operating system?

Re:Mirror of wonderful post

Buddy, the MySQL settings are probably set to a low queue limit and since the queue limit is full it is rejecting all incoming connections until a spot is availble.

I know this from experience. They probably have set it down to a lower level because the system can't handle a higher queue level.

You don't understand.

Because we can is the spirit behind all great or not so great endeavors. You can never tell what might come out of it.

Re:That is so exciting *yawn*

which piece of news do you think is more insignificant ?

well, what's significant is that we can run NetBSD on Debian on NetBSD on Debian on NetBSD on Debian on NetBSD on Debian on NetBSD on Debian on NetBSD on Debian on NetBSD on Debian on NetBSD on Debian on NetBSD on Debian on NetBSD on Debian on NetBSD on Debian on NetBSD on Debian on . . . .

segmentation fault. core dumped.

Awww, shucks. I was having fun

Re:kernel performance

"I don't think Linux" = "I don't think Linus"

Re:BSD + MySQL + PHP = Crap

heuh? So does Python.