i think the real irony in this thread is that ubuntu makes the dogs
breakfast of linux more like freebsd in its operational elegance.

fwiw - there are several things about freebsd's kernel which are
definitely nicer than what's available on linux.  notably in the
networking realm.
 - 10GE optimizations w/TCP segment offload (linux might have this now)
 - SCTP - admittedly of niche interest, but this just works on freebsd
and doesn't DIY brain surgery
 - soft updates for filesystem updates
 - pluggable network stack w/netgraph
 - kernel queues
 - accept filters
 - partial support for pf (which is just good enough to keep you from
going to openbsd given how nice pf is.)

admittedly these aren't necessarily of interest to folks that would be
looking at ubuntu.

linux is a great workstation os and more than capable in the server
space, but if you're a hardcore network nerd (which i happen to be)
you kind of find yourself frustrated at the way some of this stuff is
handled on linux.

plus freebsd has a far more bitchin' mascot. which is admittedly, a
highly subjective metric and has nothing to do with kernel function.
:)

On 12/16/07, Mike Miller <mbmiller at taxa.epi.umn.edu> wrote:
> On Sat, 15 Dec 2007, Anna Edwards wrote:
>
> > a friend of mine gave me the oddest task. he likes both ubuntu and free
> > bsd kernal. he asked me to put the freebsd 6.3 kernel in his ubuntu 7.10
> > desktop. how would i do this?
>
> I'm pretty sure that every ubuntu program would have to be compiled from
> source with the Free BSD kernel.  You'd want to start by getting GCC and
> compiler tools working.
>
> What can he do with the Free BSD kernel that he can't do with the Linux
> kernel?
>
> It sounds like way more trouble than it would be worth.  Tell him you'll
> do it for $10,000, but it might take two months!
>

-- 
steve ulrich (sulrich at botwerks.*)