But unless you're an expert in operating system internals
Not in the slightest. I have a
basic understanding of system administration in Linux, and used to be absolutely enamored with Linux. Less so am I anymore. I have no idea what I’m doing really. Honestly though, I used to love making FrankenDebians. The builds didn’t last long, if at all, but it was fun. I am moving to BSD because A) it satisfies my need to do shit in ways that most people in my own culture don’t, and B) I prefer the BSD license to GPL, as it gives you,
the programmer, more freedom. Oh yeah, and systemd. Red Hat/IBM can eat a bag of dicks.
What are you referring to as "system applications"? Things included in base (like find and tar), or packages? Our of curiosity, can you explain what "lexicography and semantics" means, and what specific differences you see?
I just throw terms around until I have a word spaghetti that makes sense to me. As people correct me, I improve upon my vocabulary, and move on. I prefer
some of the tools of the FreeBSD userland, but yeah… Just ignore that stupid I made. I do that quite often.
That would be the approach I take, for the following reason...
If you try to put the NetBSD kernel into a working FreeBSD install, then you are taking a solid environment and introducing a very significant unknown to that environment, affecting very critical areas of the installation.
However, if you take a working NetBSD and change out some programs, the shock to the installation is much less significant, and may affect less-critical areas of the installation.
In other words, start with a known, solid foundation and make changes on top of that. Don't try to swap the foundation out from under an existing building.
So if I want the backwards learning experience (which I somewhat do)…
Anyway, I’m getting really pissed I have to work with windows, so I’m probably gonna dual boot Debian and change the kernel (Bullseye only has the 5.10 kernel but bullseye-backports has Linux 6.0). Once that is working, I will go back to working with BSD.