3 thoughts on “Arch GNU/Linux Ported to run on the FreeBSD kernel”

1. 
   Pj says:

   I think phoronix got it wrong (there was something in the comments from the author himself) and ArchBSD is actually not only running the FreeBSD kernel, but also using the entire FreeBSD userland!

   Best wishes,
   Pj
2. 
   Gerard says:

   Just read what you’re referring to, Pj. That’s interesting indeed.

   Actually, first of all, the project is using BSD userland, there was someone who attempted the same but with a GNU userland which has long died.
   The reason I started this project, which some may not agree with, was the lack of binary packages that were outdated in FreeBSD repos and to change the initsystem to something more modern.
   Basically, the project was to user a new package manager (pacman) and to use a new initsystem ( OpenRC ) and things have been going well.
   A few other important changes are:
   PKGBUILD and makepkg work with FreeBSD ports in a jail, this saves effort of compiling outside the port tree and having to setup a lot of system variables to keep them prefixed in /usr/local to keep to BSD standards
   The benefit to this is ease, and you can also override variables in PKGBUILD such as LDFLAGS, CFLAGS, CONFIGURE etc to set any options you otherwise would when building outside the port tree.
   I know most people on this Forum are anti-BSD, but this was a personal project for me, to change some of the things I disliked about FreeBSD.
3. 
   Pj says:

   Though I think he (the developer) doesn’t know about pkgng. I tried it last month and I have to say that it really is an amazing binary package manager!