Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 09:54:57 -0700 From: garys@opusnet.com (Gary W. Swearingen) To: Nikolas Britton <nikolas.britton@gmail.com> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: StarBSD OS and Star OS -- Was: BSDLinux OS Message-ID: <cor7copmzi.7co@mail.opusnet.com> In-Reply-To: <ef10de9a0508200102148196e0@mail.gmail.com> (Nikolas Britton's message of "Sat, 20 Aug 2005 03:02:06 -0500") References: <ef10de9a0508200102148196e0@mail.gmail.com>
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Nikolas Britton <nikolas.britton@gmail.com> writes: > Anyone want to port FreeBSD to the Linux kernel? This is what I'm thinking... And this is what I'm thinking... I'd like to see a set of mini-distributions which are various combinations of: 1) kernel (*BSDs and, if Nikolas can manage it, Linux :), 2) root file system code (preferably, a selection of those supported by the kernel), 3) an installer which installs the rest of the OS and applications using "pkgsrc" off other CDs (or another part of a DVD) or off the network, etc. There could be choice in the installer if some like GPL and others don't, graphics or text, etc. And if this could be done with "pkgsrc", I suppose it could support multiple package systems. My main motivation is to have all (ha!) of the non-GNU people maintaining the same basic programs and documentation. Competition in the kernel seems to be enevitable and even desirable, but I doubt if anyone cares as much about the other basic OS software, and if they do, they can always have competing packages. Currently, a lot of work is duplicated on the BSD OSes or too-often it just doesn't get done, at least on some BSDs. The main downside (besides too much work until the current BSDs are made obsolete :) is that it would result in a lot of versions even worse than Linux because it would be so easy to create them. Another problem is related to system control scripts. I think that there could be no choice in such system and it would probably use NetBSD's rc.d which is also now FreeBSD's, AFAIK. And the documentation job would be made harder, but there would be more people doing it, eventually, if the many OS versions can share it. And I suspect that there are many more impediments to such a modular OS than I'm aware of, and they're probably already in mailing lists.
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