Debian developers warned in a mailing list post that Debian kFreeBSD is at risk of being dropped from official support.

kFreeBSD
========

We remain gravely concerned about the viability of this port. Despite
the reduced scope, we feel that the port is not currently of sufficient
quality to feature as a fully supported release architecture in Jessie.
However, we accept that our published view of the port has not been as
‘clear and unambiguous’ as we would wish.

We therefore advise the kFreeBSD porters that the port is in danger of
being dropped from Jessie, and invite any porters who are able to commit
to working on the port in the long term to make themselves known *now*.
The factor that gives us greatest concern is the human resources
available to the port.

Porters of any architecture need to bear in mind that being part of a
stable release is a long commitment to both taking care of stable and
oldstable, and continuing development in sid. It has implications for
the security team, release team, DSA and other parties.

The urgency of this matter cannot be over-stated. We will assess the
viability of kFreeBSD in Jessie on or after 1st November, and a yes/no
decision will be taken at that time. This will not be a full
architecture qualification, but a simple decision on whether or not the
release team’s concerns have been adequately addressed.

Check out the official announcement here: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/09/msg00002.html

FreeBSD vt(4) – commonly known as “Newcons”-, which is planned to replace Syscons as the default FreeBSD console, is now available on Debian GNU/kFreeBSD.

Newcons provides many interesting new features, such as KMS support, Unicode, double-width CJK characters, etc.

The Debian GNU/kFreeBSD team are now looking for volunteers: Newcons coming to Debian GNU/kFreeBSD (testers wanted!)

With the new Debian 7.0 Wheezy released, it was time for Phoronix to update some benchmarks comparing Debian GNU/kFreeBSD vs Debian 7.0: Debian GNU/kFreeBSD vs Debian 7.0 GNU/Linux. The outcomes have not changed much since last December’s test: Debian is overall slightly faster.

This is just for info only, let’s not get into Debian vs FreeBSD discussion.

I just wonder why the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is used as project name. Well, I understand why, but it’s such a mouthful. Why not rename the project to DebianBSD or DebBSD?

About Debian GNU/kFreeBSD: Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is an operating system released by the Debian project, which uses the FreeBSD kernel, instead of the Linux kernel. “kFreeBSD” stands for “”kernel of FreeBSD” and “GNU/kFreeBSD” means “GNU with kernel of FreeBSD”. By combining a FreeBSD kernel with GNU based userland, Debian GNU/kFreeBSD supports PF, ZFS, Jails, NDIS drivers and is potentially less vulnerable to legal challenges.

Continuing with the “2011? series, let’s have a look today at the development planned for Debian GNU/kFreeBSD. Earlier posts can be found here: PC-BSD, pfSense, HeX Live, MaheshaBSD, GhostBSD.

Robert Millan from the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD project emailed an update for his project.

Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is a port that consists of GNU userland using the GNU C library on top of FreeBSD’s kernel, coupled with the regular Debian package set.

Robert writes:

“First and foremost, 2011 will be the year of the first release of Debian GNU/kFreeBSD. It won’t be a stable release, but a “technology preview”. Nevertheless it is quite usable.

This is one of the most significant milestones the project has reached since its inception.”

Thanks for the update Robert. Wishing you and the other devs all the best for 2011.