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> A really big difference is that FreeBSD is the kernel and userland together. Can someone explain the significance of this as the author seems to keep glossin

> A really big difference is that FreeBSD is the kernel and userland together. Can someone explain the significance of this as the author seems to keep glossing over it. What's does he mean by saying they are "together" and what is the advantage of it?

wsterling 11y ago
The userland and kernel are developed together by the same group of people/project. So the design is consistent across the system. In Linux the kernel comes from Linus and the kernel development team. The userland usually comes from the GNU core utils team, the distro creator and several other places. This can cause disconnects between how various things in the system work, kernel patches to get a random features to work, etc.
protomyth 11y ago
The significance is that you have one group building the kernel and userland which allows for implementation and testing of features that cross that boundary. A non-FreeBSD example is the recent work on pledge in OpenBSD. Kernel changes were made in conjunction with changes to a significant part of the userland. That is a minor example, but gives the feel of how having the same set of eyes look to the whole system can be a benefit.
jamiesonbecker 11y ago
I think what the OP is referring to is that Linux is just the kernel, whereas a full "GNU/Linux" distribution is the GNU userspace utilities (the command line utilities), compilers, etc and other things (not necesarily part of GNU). The author might be saying that the FreeBSD OS is essentially treated as a single distribution that is both developed, maintained, and packaged cohesively by a single team, as opposed to Linux, where the kernel team (led by Linus) develops the kernel (and maintains/integrates associated parts such as device drivers and filesystems), other devs develop other utilities, and distribution teams pull together everything else (usually either a company such as Canonical or Red Hat, or often a team of volunteers such as with Debian.) For the latter, it really comes down to a difference in philosophy: because FreeBSD is a single, cohesive unit, there's less room for differing opinions and variety in the mix, which can deliver solid results but with reduced "moving fast and breaking things" that sometimes result in faster innovative leaps that you might see on Linux. (But how much do you enjoy seeing your core infrastructure broken? e.g., this is also why Debian has three tracks - stable, testing, and unstable, to accomodate different levels of risk.) (Your choice of operating systems may have nothing at all to do with your choice of governance -- but the solid, stable approach could be characterized as conservative and the move fast and break things could be progressive ;) personally, I like both at different times)
oscargrouch 11y ago
If you download the source of freebsd, the userland tools come together with it, they are developed as a whole with the kernel side of things. Even the clang/llvm compiler will get built by a 'make buildworld' You have a full working system from source, while with linux you need kernel, binutils, gcc, in different pieces, not developed as a cohesive whole

wsterling 11y ago

The userland and kernel are developed together by the same group of people/project. So the design is consistent across the system. In Linux the kernel comes from Linus and the kernel development team. The userland usually comes from the GNU core utils team, the distro creator and several other places. This can cause disconnects between how various things in the system work, kernel patches to get a random features to work, etc.

protomyth 11y ago

The significance is that you have one group building the kernel and userland which allows for implementation and testing of features that cross that boundary. A non-FreeBSD example is the recent work on pledge in OpenBSD. Kernel changes were made in conjunction with changes to a significant part of the userland. That is a minor example, but gives the feel of how having the same set of eyes look to the whole system can be a benefit.

jamiesonbecker 11y ago

I think what the OP is referring to is that Linux is just the kernel, whereas a full "GNU/Linux" distribution is the GNU userspace utilities (the command line utilities), compilers, etc and other things (not necesarily part of GNU). The author might be saying that the FreeBSD OS is essentially treated as a single distribution that is both developed, maintained, and packaged cohesively by a single team, as opposed to Linux, where the kernel team (led by Linus) develops the kernel (and maintains/integrates associated parts such as device drivers and filesystems), other devs develop other utilities, and distribution teams pull together everything else (usually either a company such as Canonical or Red Hat, or often a team of volunteers such as with Debian.) For the latter, it really comes down to a difference in philosophy: because FreeBSD is a single, cohesive unit, there's less room for differing opinions and variety in the mix, which can deliver solid results but with reduced "moving fast and breaking things" that sometimes result in faster innovative leaps that you might see on Linux. (But how much do you enjoy seeing your core infrastructure broken? e.g., this is also why Debian has three tracks - stable, testing, and unstable, to accomodate different levels of risk.) (Your choice of operating systems may have nothing at all to do with your choice of governance -- but the solid, stable approach could be characterized as conservative and the move fast and break things could be progressive ;) personally, I like both at different times)

oscargrouch 11y ago

If you download the source of freebsd, the userland tools come together with it, they are developed as a whole with the kernel side of things. Even the clang/llvm compiler will get built by a 'make buildworld' You have a full working system from source, while with linux you need kernel, binutils, gcc, in different pieces, not developed as a cohesive whole