Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD

The time for action is now. The Symbols system needs jails(!) kFreeBSD has "jails." Stability demands ZFS(!) The Debian BSD kernel supports ZFS. The author craves both Linux and FreeBSD. Behold, such a thing exists(!) Not only that, but instances of lawsuits over patents and licenses become nil as the operating system leaves the Linux area and draws closer to the Berkeley Software Distribution model. There may be nothing to sue for at this end right now, but the future still exists when last I checked, a few seconds ago.

The sweetness deepens: Operating benchmarks for Debian kFreeBSD are phenomenally inviting. H264 video encoding is faster on AMD64 kFreeBSD than on any other kernel. Benchmark tests show the kernel chalks up almost a frame and a half per second more than in normal Debian 64 bit operations.

That's not as impressive as the 23% improvement in speed over straight Linux during 7zip compression. kFreeBSD wasn't the top performer in every test. It came in second on Gzip and LZMA compression, and in GnuPG encryption. All these tests were reported by Phoronix, and are slightly dated. It would be nice to see a bleeding edge redux of the study because this one was damned impressive and kernels generally improve over time.

There are other nice traits of kFreeBSD. Here's one: Further reading has shown that BSD-loyal developers tend to merge new features rather than create a distribution fork. Having to commit to development course deviations based on progress that could potentially move the system away from improvements in other areas has always been a troublesome aspect of Linux.

Further. A positive quality of FreeBSD which probably would not affect my systems anytime soon is the hardware support advantage FreeBSD has over Linux with a couple of companies. FreeBSD does include some proprietary binary in its hardware driver source code. Agreements have been made in the past to allow proprietary closed code into the FreeBSD kernel to enable a closer working relationship with some hardware manufacturers. That code has been excluded from the Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD release in order to keep it 100% compliant with FOSS standards, but the working relationship still exists. Some hardware may be functional under this kernel that may not be supported under Linux, or at least not supported as quickly. [It is irresponsible and disrespectful to say that Linux reverse engineering and driver hacking could ever entirely fail to support some form of hardware, considering how hard the developers work and the seemingly miraculous things they have pulled off in the past, hence the italics.]

I just had a conversation a few days ago about how much I missed Debian, brought on by the complications I encountered during the aborted migration to BSD. If I had known there was a Linux/BSD hybrid before this week I would have been running it already. There's only one other thing on the planet that gets me as excited as I am right now, and that's sex. An-tici ... pation!