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I wonder if it would make sense for FreeBSD to switch to Linux as the kernel.


A large part of FreeBSD is the kernel, and another large part is userland tools that support the kernel.

FreeBSD on the Linux kernel would be a lot of work and at the end of the day, I'm not quite sure Linux needs a BSD licensed ifconfig, etc?

If FreeBSD wanted to use Linux video drivers, that could be useful, but there would need to be a stable interface between the kernel and the driver, and that interface would need to make sense for FreeBSD. Stable kernel apis is an anti-goal for Linux, so that's a non-starter; I wonder if Windows drivers could be more amenable, ala NDISWrapper; but that would also be a lot of effort, and if there were effort for FreeBSD video work, I'd imagine the intel drivers would get ported faster.


Linux needs an ifconfig with the BSD command-line syntax and output style, that can handle IPv6 stuff, but that already exists now.

* https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/504084/5132


What would be the point? The reason to use a BSD is the kernel. If you change the kernel to a linux kernel, there's no reason to use it over a Linux distribution.


We have the opposite situation. Debian userland with FreeBSD kernel.

https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/




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