Other FreeBSD look and feel on a major Linux like Debian?

M

mavavilj

I have this idea that I thought that Linuxulator is great when it runs a Linux program. But there exists programs which do not work with Linuxulator or are not developed with Linuxulator or FreeBSD in mind.

So when such software exists, I want to use Linux, because the program is made for it.

However, could there then exist a middle ground so that one could run Linux software, but feel similar to when using FreeBSD?

E.g. a Cygwin-like thing for, say, Debian where one can have FreeBSD terminal commands etc.

Any inputs on whether such has any real demand?
 
I run a laptop which has also Debian installed. That was from the time where the hardware did not work using FreeBSD. I do not use Linuxulator.
mavavilj said:
However, could there then exist a middle ground so that one could run Linux software, but feel similar to when using FreeBSD?

E.g. a Cygwin-like thing for, say, Debian where one can have FreeBSD terminal commands etc.
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Beside a few options which might be different depending on the "incarnation" as GNU-extensions or not, the programms work similar from my user perspective. I guess that the Linuxulator - whatever that is - should not change that.
 
chrbr said:
I run a laptop which has also Debian installed. That was from the time where the hardware did not work using FreeBSD. I do not use Linuxulator.

Beside a few options which might be different depending on the "incarnation" as GNU-extensions or not, the programms work similar from my user perspective. I guess that the Linuxulator - whatever that is - should not change that.
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There are certainly going to be programs that will not run on the Linuxulator. Android Studio is one.

ZioMario said:
Do you like this ?

github.com

GitHub - jart/blink: tiniest x86-64-linux emulator

tiniest x86-64-linux emulator. Contribute to jart/blink development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com
Click to expand...

Yes, I was thinking of the Cosmopolitan Libc as a way to ensure a compatibility between a Linux and FreeBSD. However, there will certainly be programs that will not want to limit to such, but rather might use Linux features not available in Linuxulator. Then I would want to run the program, but feel more like running FreeBSD, even if it's Debian. So I could, for example, want to feel like I am working with Ports, even if it's really apt.
 
mavavilj said:
There are certainly going to be programs that will not run on the Linuxulator. Android Studio is one.
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I believe javac, adb, aapt and Android NDK (clang) work fine. So you can still build Android apps on FreeBSD, just you will need to find a different text editor.
mavavilj said:
Then I would want to run the program, but feel more like running FreeBSD, even if it's Debian. So I could, for example, want to feel like I am working with Ports, even if it's really apt.
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You can get a BSD userland (i.e BSD replacement of GNU coreutils) using:

https://github.com/dcantrell/bsdutils

Basically, something like Alpine Linux + BSDUtils would feel a little closer

For a ports clone, you can install PkgSrc (from NetBSD) on Linux:

https://pkgsrc.org/

Though be aware that loads of stuff won't have the correct patches required to build successfully.
There is also this project which is apparently meant to provide a more BSD userland:

https://chimera-linux.org/

Though it seems to have much more of a focus on desktop environments compared to most actual BSD projects.
 
Yes,me too. I did some tests some months ago and they failed. I haven't been able to understand what to do. And Jart didn't reply to my questions. It sounds too much complicated for me to have a good start.
 
The bhyve recommendation looks promising, and possibly it's possible to develop Android on FreeBSD too, but the core issue here is not the possibility, but that having Linuxes and FreeBSD not share goals would mean that there will be times of no guaranteed compatibility. Then it makes more sense to run each OS natively, rather than attempt to emulate, or run the OS that the software's devs targeted.

I do not know about you, but I am still a bit lost as to the real benefits of Linuxulator etc. Nice to have, but why cannot one just run the real thing for software that's Linux-only (such as many drivers)?

If same issues are true for bhyve as for e.g. VMWare etc., then there will still be programs that will not work or will not work as efficiently etc.

Chimera Linux? Well, will it build and run existing Linux apps? Void Linux looked good too, but it hardly works with .debs etc.

One possible issue is having double standards. Rather than having to read only Debian docs or FreeBSD docs, one would then need to also read this "FreeBSD-Debian"'s docs, unless the translation from it to Debian is straightforward. OTOH, if such layer would work properly, it would simplify the lives of people who use predominantly FreeBSD, but sometimes need an alternative runtime for certain programs.

Ultimately one could also run a separate computer for a Linux and just use it through a KVM in FreeBSD.

I am not an expert on the topic, but I believe that virtualizations etc. will always be dissimilar to the native OS.
 
mavavilj said:
However, could there then exist a middle ground so that one could run Linux software, but feel similar to when using FreeBSD?
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Problem is this is very, very subjective. What does qualify as "feel simiar to FreeBSD"? Everybody has its own criteria for that. I could argue that from user perspective they are very similar - console, X, many commands are the same, some alike...

Last time I used linux ABI on FreeBSD was when I wanted to run skype, that was almost 20 years ago. I understand the benefit of it in general, it's just not for me.

I can't give you advice what to run, I can only share what I do. If my workload requires me to use Linux I use Linux. I don't force, hack around and waste my time trying to make it somewhat work on FreeBSD if it's not ment to be there. I waste my time on other stuff ;-). At home my FreeBSD boxes are only virtual, most of my benefits stem from qemu/kvm and/or native tools I want to run on Linux.

You could use bhyve/VirtualBox and install Linux VM and benefit from both worlds. But in the past I did have issues passing through USB devices (jlink debugger) to VM. It was just not worth it.

And then, there's the good oldie - dual boot.
 
_martin said:
Problem is this is very, very subjective. What does qualify as "feel simiar to FreeBSD"? Everybody has its own criteria for that. I could argue that from user perspective they are very similar - console, X, many commands are the same, some alike...
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Ultimately that the userland behaves as much like FreeBSD, even if the OS is Debian and the kernel is Linux?

Yes my use case is essentially similar. I have software that is developed for Debian and software that is developed for FreeBSD. I do not believe that any sort of virtualization layer will work 100% of the time, so I prefer to run both natively. But while doing this I also want some "common layer" between them. One such is that one could make the other feel like the other so that one doesn't have to memorize different console commands etc.

Rather, I could e.g. write a FreeBSD console command on Debian and find that it calls whatever the thing is really called, even if I used a FreeBSD convention for calling it. How much this benefits is up to debate of course. Possibly I could also use FreeBSD shell scripts directly on Debian using such layer. Then I could test deploying things on both systems while using common scripts, even if the underlying implementations or binaries are different.

Ultimately I'd like a React Native kind of thing of native OSes tbh.
 
mavavilj said:
Ultimately that the userland behaves as much like FreeBSD, even if the OS is Debian and the kernel is Linux?
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Yes and no, depending on your definition. ls behaves /almost/ the same on both. WM will give you very alike experience too. python/perl/.. scripting would be the same too.
But no, it does things differently under the hood and you can't ignore that.

In the end they are different OSs so you do need to be familiar with both of them. How much depends on your workload -- that basically defines all your needs.
 
_martin said:
Yes and no, depending on your definition. ls behaves /almost/ the same on both. WM will give you very alike experience too. python/perl/.. scripting would be the same too.
But no, it does things differently under the hood and you can't ignore that.

In the end they are different OSs so you do need to be familiar with both of them. How much depends on your workload -- that basically defines all your needs.
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Yes, but this is still far less than what's required in order to use Linuxulator effectively or in order to port software between the two OSes.

E.g. since Android Studio already runs on Linuxes, then I find that attempting to run it on FreeBSD is not worth the effort. Not unless Google or something begins to support it officially.
 
mavavilj said:
I do not know about you, but I am still a bit lost as to the real benefits of Linuxulator etc. Nice to have, but why cannot one just run the real thing for software that's Linux-only (such as many drivers)?
Click to expand...

The Linuxulator doesn't run a Linux kernel and drivers are in the kernel.

It's not that we wouldn't like to run all Linux software, including drivers, but the effort to write a Linuxulator that can do that is great.

In addition the interface between the Linux kernel and Linux drivers constantly changes, so any FreeBSD effort would have to be updated as well. And since most Linux drivers are GPLed they wouldn't find their way into the FreeBSD source tree either way.
 
mavavilj said:
I do not know about you, but I am still a bit lost as to the real benefits of Linuxulator etc. Nice to have, but why cannot one just run the real thing for software that's Linux-only (such as many drivers)?
Click to expand...

The Linuxulator is just a system call translator that allows running Linux binaries on FreeBSD, unmodified. Because the Linux community doesn't care to write portable software, third party developers are forced to use linux centric services and interfaces. Just look at the software hosted under freedesktop.org and you'll see what I mean. When you install a typical application from ports; you're likely to grab a bunch of Linux cruft along with it, in order for it to work on FreeBSD. The FreeBSD community isn't responsible for that design flaw.
 
mavavilj said:
Chimera Linux? Well, will it build and run existing Linux apps?
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Yes. Because it is linux.

The Linuxulator is quite close in concept to Wine. It wont work with drivers but it can sometimes work well enough to run software you need so that you can avoid fscking around with Linux (or Windows). They both work well enough to be able to build / develop Android apps. Especially since FreeBSD has a native adb in ports for debugging via USB (also remember that adb can be set to communicate via TCP).

mavavilj said:
Void Linux looked good too, but it hardly works with .debs etc.
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Is .deb support another requirement? Quite a trivial one to extract them and get the files out.

Though this is verging dangerously close to the concept of "I can't run XXXX because it isn't Debian". You will never find a solution to that problem unless you run... Debian.
 
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