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Debian pushes development of kFreeBSD port

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Debian GNU/kFreeBSD has been around for a while, but now it will be an official part of the distro, combining the strength FreeBSD kernel with the GNU C library and userland utilities.

The Debian Project has announced that it sees the port of the Debian system to the FreeBSD kernel fit to be handled equal with the other release ports. The upcoming release codenamed ‘Squeeze’ is planned to be the first Debian distribution to be released with Linux and FreeBSD kernels.

The kFreeBSD architectures for the AMD64/Intel EM64T and i386 processor architectures are now release architectures. Severe bugs on these architectures will be considered release critical the same way as bugs on other architectures like armel or i386 are. If a particular package does not build or work properly on such an architecture this problem is considered release-critical.

Debian’s main motivation for the inclusion of the FreeBSD kernel into the official release process is the opportunity to offer to its users a broader choice of kernels and also include a kernel that provides features such as jails, the OpenBSD Packet Filter and support for NDIS drivers in the mainline kernel with full support.

As usual some think it’s an odd match and a waste of time and resource, others see it as a nice combination a development.

FreeBSD: Like Linux

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Kuvaton has a picture of operating systems, comparing them with cars. Or should I say, a picture of cars compared with operating systems?

FreeBSD: Like Linux but takes more cargo on the expense of being less customable.

os_cars

I like the VMS one. What do you think of these comparisons? OK, fair or ridiculous?

This picture reminds me of the OS user mugshots that I posted a while back.

FreeBSD 8.0 vs. Ubuntu 9.10 benchmarks

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Some say comparing FreeBSD vs Linux benchmarks is unreliable and is as it were, comparing apples with pears.

For what it’s worth: the Phoronix team has done some FreeBSD 8.0 RC1 vs Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 6 benchmarking:

Both FreeBSD 8.0 and Ubuntu 9.10 will be included in our upcoming big operating system comparison, but for now we are just focusing upon comparing Ubuntu 9.10 and FreeBSD 8.0, but have also added in FreeBSD 7.2 for reference and to see how the performance of this BSD operating system has changed. With FreeBSD 8.0 we were using the AMD64 DVD of the first release candidate using a stock installation. With Ubuntu 9.10 we were using the x86_64 server CD of the Alpha 6 build. With FreeBSD not shipping with a desktop environment by default, we used the Ubuntu server CD so that both could be tested just from the terminal in a similar environment. All of the FreeBSD and Ubuntu options were left at their defaults. One of the package versions worth noting is that GCC 4.2.1 is used in both FreeBSD 7.2 and FreeBSD 8.0 while Ubuntu 9.10 is using GCC 4.4.1. FreeBSD was also using the default UFS file-system while Ubuntu 9.10 is running with EXT4. Each operating system was tested with its default settings (including any debug options) and packages to test an “out of the box” experience. We will be back with more benchmarks once each of these operating systems have been officially released.

and concludes that,

… more times than not, Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 6 came out on top compared to FreeBSD — both the 7.2 and 8.0-RC releases. Only in the 7-Zip, C-Ray, John The Ripper MD5, BYTE Unix Benchmark Dhrystone 2, and SQLite tests did FreeBSD outperform Ubuntu Linux. Between FreeBSD 7.2 and 8.0, the newer release generally did better but it had regressed with the 7-Zip, Gzip, MAFFT, and Threaded I/O Tester Read tests. That’s how the story pans out on a dual AMD Opteron quad-core workstation, but shortly we will be back around with our large operating system comparison on different hardware and with the final releases of these different operating systems to see how they compare.

Please note that 1) the inner workings of the two operating systems are different, and 2) neither of the systems are ready for release yet, so a lot of things will change and improve.

PC-BSD 7.1 vs. Kubuntu 9.04 Benchmarks

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The well-know bench marking website Phoronix has carried out a benchmark run between Kubuntu 9.04 and PC-BSD 7.1 (20/04/2009)

Earlier this month PC-BSD 7.1 was released, which is based upon the FreeBSD 7.1 stable release, but of course with the extra packages and changes that make PC-BSD an easier to use BSD-based desktop operating system. PC-BSD 7.1 ships with X.Org 7.4 and KDE 4.2.2 installed along with many other packages when using the x86 or x64 DVD installations. Though with the Phoronix Test Suite now having enhanced support for PC-BSD, we decided to see how well PC-BSD 7.1 performs against Kubuntu 9.04.

Both systems perform almost equally (only seconds of difference), but Kubuntu scores more points in this test than PC-BSD.

I’d say that this test is not altogether “fair” as different versions of GCC and X.org have been used. This could easily have quite an impact on the results.

It would be interesting to see if Phoronix did this test again later on this year when FreeBSD 8.0 has come out.

Link
Details and graphs of the test

Great Bay Software moving to FreeBSD

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Great Bay Software has announced (Press Release) that it has migrated their the OS of their appliances from Linux to FreeBSD.

The decision was motivated by FreeBSD’s license, stability and version control.

… In addition, the Great Bay has changed to FreeBSD® for all of its appliances, a move motivated by a quest for greater performance, more stability in terms of licensing, and better version control.

“For us, running on a generic Linux variant was no longer enough”, said Pettit.

“In our move to FreeBSD, we’ve seen dramatic improvements across the board. For example, in our most frequent database transactions we’ve actually tripled the performance of the system.”

Great Bay Software is the company behind Beacon Endpoint Profiler™ which is used for the deployment and management of 802.1X and Network Admission Control (NAC) systems. Their product is used in authentication-enabled networks, compliance initiatives, and incident response processes.

Links:

Announcement  |  Great Bay Software Website

Debian gets FreeBSD kernel support

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The open-source Debian operating system (Linux) gained support for the FreeBSD kernel last weekend (unstable / experimental), allowing users to run the same operating system on two different software cores.

The project was announced in a message to the Debian developers’ announcement list.

More on zdnet.co.uk

Will it be useful? Time will tell – internetnews.com

The Debian kFreeBSD Team have listed their reasons for enabling the FreeBSD kernel.

Tomahawk Desktop switches to FreeBSD; from Linux

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According to this  press release Tomahawk Computers has changed its Tomahawk Desktop from Linux to FreeBSD.

Tomahawk Desktop switches to BSD and raise funds

Tomahawk Computers Pte Ltd, Singapore, the makers of the Tomahawk Desktop operating system, is pleased to announce that the next version of the Tomahawk Desktop operating system would be based on the rock solid BSD code.

Tomahawk Desktop operating system is a general purpose operating system for personal computers/laptops based on BSD code with K Desktop Environment (KDE).

Current predicament of the desktop operating system market is people are in fact left with only two choices, either live with very serious security issues or buy software tied to hardware at high premium. This situation obviously create a lucrative and large market opportunity for us.

Our mission is to offer a secure operating system for desktop, laptop and mobile devices markets based on widely known Unix strengths for both closed source as well as open source applications and drivers to flourish without any legal hassle on wider choice of hardware.

Tomahawk’s main reason for switching is the GPL license and the Linux kernel:

Linux is an operating system kernel. FreeBSD is a tightly integrated operating system release.

Links:

Press Release | Fund Raising & Reasons for switch |  Website

Differences between BSD and Linux

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Geekmalaya has a post with 18 points on why the writer thinks FreeBSD is better than Linux. 

  1. BSD license allows users/companies to modify a program’s source code and not to release changes to the public
  2. BSD has the so-called “core system” (without packages)
  3. On BSD systems, all add-on packages are strictly installed into the /usr/local directory
  4. BSD systems use the system of “ports”, which are fingerprints of applications in the /usr/ports directory
  5. BSD systems have also their stable version
  6. Of course, the kernel is absolutely different
  7. BSD has FFS file system
  8. BSD systems divide their partitions internally
  9. Unless you make a good kernel hack, BSD systems can only be installed into the primary partition
  10. System configuration is manual for most of the time, but various clones like PC-BSD break this convention
  11. All BSD systems have a Linux emulation support
  12. BSD systems have less support from driver vendors, thus they lag behind in this view
  13. BSD systems do not use the Unix System V
  14. BSD kernels can be set to several security levels
  15. BSD’s have everything under one ROOF
  16. Generally, BSD systems boot and reboot faster than Linux
  17. In comparison to BSD, most Linux distributions are overbloated
  18. If you compile programs from ports, you will not stumble into compilation errors

I’m only linking to this article for information – please don’t start a flame war here. Read the whole article and the reasoning here.

Source: geekmalaya.com – 22/01/2009