I was noticing that kfreebsd-amd64 and kfreebsd-i386 are now architectures in the Debian unstable repositories. I’ve always been interested in running a GNU operating system with an alternative kernel. Of course, so far nothing has been stable enough to warrant leaving Linux. And besides, Linux does have the best mascot of all the kernels. The Linux kernel is also largely responsible for the rapid growth of the free software movement. Still, the idea is appealing and here’s where things stand with other kernels.