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

[cracauer@]

Well, surely by providing a GPL version of all of the FreeBSD tree too. But even that will not get around the fact that the Linux community does not seem to be focused on providing compatibility for FreeBSD.

Even if you are willing to make a GPLed BSD kernel to take Linux drivers...

... you still face the problem that the driver interface in Linux changes very often. Your drivers won't live long, compilation-wise.

 

[ZioMario]

Even if you are willing to make a GPLed BSD kernel to take Linux drivers...

... you still face the problem that the driver interface in Linux changes very often. Your drivers won't live long, compilation-wise.

What if instead of taking the Linux drivers,we take the Android drivers ? Is a better choice ?

 

[cracauer@]

What if instead of taking the Linux drivers,we take the Android drivers ? Is a better choice ?

No idea. I imagine the Android driver interface changes less than the upstream Linux kernel. But now you can't take driivers for devices that Android does not support neither from Linux nor FreeBSD.

 

[ZioMario]

No idea. I imagine the Android driver interface changes less than the upstream Linux kernel. But now you can't take driivers for devices that Android does not support neither from Linux nor FreeBSD.

Android supports a lot of drivers,more on the mobile area,where Linux is not yet good.

If you consider Android X66 Bliss-OS,you will see that it supports even the AMD and Nvidia GPU drivers....there are developers who are working for creating a better integration between Android and Linux even on the Desktop area,since Android X86 can run on the Desktop PC. They use houdini,a library that makes a bridge between Arm and the X86-X64 applications.

 

[mavavilj]

How would one ever get around the issue of non-matching syscall interfaces?

I don't know how one can even expect that one could model another (operating) system 1:1 on another one. They would have to be the same system in that case?

Also, possibly, such effort would be better to be done towards GNU Hurd/Mach:

https://image3.slideserve.com/5576521/reconsidering-the-kernel-interface-l.jpg

which also bakes in the drivers available for Linux, or writing the drivers for FreeBSD.

Also, in this context one would desire "portable drivers".

BTW,

I'd rather port the BSD userspace tools (coreutils, what not) to Linux than have GNU fork the BSD kernel

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/n235c/comment/c35qskq/ 13 years ago.

Android supports a lot of drivers,more on the mobile area,where Linux is not yet good.

And it might never be, if you've followed the development of postmarketOS. The issues there are similar to this one. The driver code is simply not portable, but some of it has been written "only for this particular OS (or even device configuration)" in mind. The Linux of pmOS does not include drivers for common mobile device tasks like doing calls or using the camera most of the time.

While writing the drivers might be possible, is it worth the effort, since some things already work? Why hasn't the GNU community moved onto FreeBSD?

I think it's far more useful to focus on creating usable high-level interfaces on several moving targets (Debian, FreeBSD, Android) than expect a kernel-level compatibility at some point, because at that point they have to be the same OS, which does not even make sense, because then they would stagnate, rather than innovate (using their chosen model of development).

E.g.

usable high-level interfaces on several moving targets (Debian, FreeBSD, Android)

means e.g. that if my setup is:

Linux (desktop), Android (mobile), FreeBSD (cloud/server or high-performance desktop workload), then I need tools to:

deploy from Linux to Android (already exists)
deploy from Linux to FreeBSD, if it's a served app that can be served from Linux OR FreeBSD depending on preferences
read/write from FreeBSD on Android, if it's a client-server app
read/write to/from and monitor FreeBSD, if it's a client-server app
replicate on FreeBSD, if it's an "unix app", but for which I want a high-performance implementation
...

TBH, I feel like for most of the use cases, connecting the OSes using different computers and networking between them is a good solution.

Now I just need a minimal "Linux box" so that I can host the most fundamental kernel functions and have the BSD user space with it.
That is, I wish to use all of them, but at certain portions.

When it comes to Android though, I am not sure why one'd want or need FreeBSD on Android.