# Porting drivers from Linux to FreeBSD



## Meroque (Dec 19, 2010)

Is possible to port drivers from kernel and packages from Linux to FreeBSD? Is it simple or hard?


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## graudeejs (Dec 19, 2010)

It is possible. It's hard to port drivers (lots of knowledge necessary), It might turn into like writing new driver based on code of linux driver

Software from Linux to FreeBSD is ported all the time
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/


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## vermaden (Dec 19, 2010)

Meroque said:
			
		

> Is possible to port drivers from kernel and packages from Linux to FreeBSD? Is it simple or hard?



Its as simple as putting a gearbox from Audi to BMW generally


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## SirDice (Dec 20, 2010)

Besides the obvious technical issues there's also a licensing issue. GPL code cannot get added to the base/kernel so the driver would be available only as a port. Unless of course you rewrite it from scratch and put it under the BSD license.


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## Bill Evans at Mariposa (Nov 19, 2017)

vermaden said:


> Its as simple as putting a gearbox from Audi to BMW generally


Oh, I am so going to steal this.


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