Martin Cracauer’s FreeBSD Page
[ . . . . ] in the FreeBSD/Linux case the base OS is very similar and the emulation layer doesn’t provide a full emulated system, but is a very thin layer to map the difference of the Linux and FreeBSD API. Since both are UNIX derivates, these differences are very small. No hardware emulation is required.
I was trolling through my referrals and found this page: very interesting overview of FreeBSD, both relative to Linux and in its own right.
According to this, calling FreeBSD’s Linux ABI an emulation layer is not accurate.
It clarifies some of what I have already learned, and supplies more detail (the stuff on how the ports collection works is interesting), and in general praises the FreeBSD team and their methods. Using the ftp archive at cdrom.com as a proving ground is interesting but I had no idea it was a single box. That’s walking the walk . . .
The bottomline is that FreeBSD is a complete system and through either a Net connection or media, you can update and support your system(s) without the headaches of any of the other packaging systems. NetBSD’s pkgsrc collection is similar: I thought it was joy to work with as well.